U.S. COVID-19 Deaths Could Be Far Higher Than Reported

There is a plethora of data and information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic but not all of it has been consistent, especially when it comes to mortality. For example, the UK has only been counting deaths where the person tested positive for the coronavirus before dying in hospital. Therefore, its figures do not match the number of death certificates citing COVID-19 as a factor and it is believed the UK's mortality numbers have been significantly underreported.

This has prompted analysts to take a closer look at excess deaths in different countries to determine whether more people have died than usual compared to the same weeks in previous years. The Financial Times conducted one such analysis, finding that Bergamo Province saw its mortality rate rise 463 percent while Madrid's climbed 161 percent. The Yale School of Public Health carried out a separate study for the Washington Post and it recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths in the United States from March through to April 04, twice as many as were publicly attributed to COVID-19.

Officially, 8,128 people died from the coronavirus during the same period and that's just 53 percent of all excess deaths, suggesting that the true number of people dying is far higher than the official statistics suggest. The analysis also looked at several states as well as New York City where 2,543 official COVID-19 deaths were recorded from March through to April 04. They accounted for just 40 percent of the city's excess deaths. In New Jersey, which has also been badly hit by the pandemic, 846 deaths were officially attributed to COVID-19 during the same period but that is just 38 percent of total excess deaths across the state.