27,000 deaths associated with coronavirus have not been counted in the US, study estimates

It takes a long time to really know the casualties of the dead and injured caused by the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. However, a new study conducted Wednesday provides an early estimate of excess mortality associated with viral diseases in the United States. It suggests that the official number of countries may have missed up to 27,000 deaths by the end of May.

Counting excess deaths from all causes (defined as deaths above baseline for the same period of the previous year from all causes) from all causes because official tolls can miss people Often considered to be a more accurate method of measuring the deadly consequences of a new, widespread disease in persons who were not diagnosed before they died. Initially, doctors and scientists were not familiar with the condition, there were no tests available to confirm the diagnosis, or simply because the disease was not known to be present in it. Areas at the time that may struggle to identify or confirm the deaths caused by.

Scientists quickly created a relatively accurate test of the coronavirus that causes covid-19 after it was discovered in China late last year. However, due to delays and flaws in the US federal government, we were unable to test for the first few months after the pandemic began in March and were unable to leave the state immediately. Lack of testing has also prevented and allowed widespread attempts to recognize and contain the earliest outbreaks in states such as New York and Washington. It is now believed that the virus had spread as early as January in the United States.

In this new study, Release At JAMA Internal Medicine, researchers sought to calculate nationwide excess deaths from March 1st to May 30th.

During those months, 95,235 deaths were attributed to covid-19 in most of the United States, but the authors found that during that period, based on a comparison of this year’s deaths with other recent deaths. There were 122,300 excess deaths, estimated to be about 28% higher. The official number of dead in covid-19. This has resulted in approximately 27,000 deaths above the normal March-May baseline in the United States. This suggests that the virus killed more people than the official number.

Daniel Weinberger, lead author and epidemiology of infectious diseases at Yale University, told Gizmodo by email. “There was a question as to whether the reported statistics overestimate the deaths of covid-19. Our analysis suggests the opposite.”

However, these findings are limited. One was that they were not included in either the covid-19 or excess mortality counts, as there was no mortality data available from Connecticut and North Carolina at the time. As of July 1 Connecticut And North carolina The death toll for covid-19 is 4,322 and 1,343 respectively.

Another caveat is that the author made some adjustments and assumptions to the estimates. In many states, especially early pandemics, there was a test backlog. That is, those who were tested for covid-19 and died in March may not have been identified for months. The state still occasionally adds a large number of new deaths that occurred earlier than reported. However, Weinberger said their assumptions required the model to be more accurate than other attempts to measure the number of excess deaths during a pandemic.

“Some news media generated estimates of excess mortality by simply comparing the number of deaths each week with the average number of deaths that week in the previous year,” he said. “This ignores trends over time (for example, increases or decreases due to changes in population size). It also doesn’t adjust for reporting delays and therefore can’t provide estimates for recent weeks.”

Perhaps the most important consideration is that not all of these excess deaths were necessarily caused directly by covid-19. Some excess deaths may reflect the deaths of people with chronic illnesses who were untreated because of the burden at some hospitals or because of fear of receiving care at the time for a pandemic. There is. However, team data and other studies do not support the theory expressed by many skeptics of Lockdown that the actions created to delay pandemics caused many preventable deaths. Indeed, there is no more death than was caused by the pandemic itself of that period.

“It’s true that there are more deaths from heart attacks, strokes, and Alzheimer’s, and some of these may be related to avoiding emergency medical care,” Weinberger said. “I think the increase related to lockdown measures is small compared to the increase directly caused by covid-19. Many people who implemented lockdown measures but had a low covid-19 epidemic from March to May. In the states, there was almost no excess death.”

It takes a long time to figure out how deadly covid-19 is and will be. But as the tests become more available, things seem to get better over time. Therefore, if the tests are still available, there may not be a big gap between overkill and covid-19 death. However, the guidelines for declaring death from covid-19 may vary from state to state (not all states publish data on possible deaths from covid-19). There is none).

Still, this study highlights how much distress caused by covid-19, And how much destruction we missed early on. Weinberger and his team hope that their research and models will continue to provide an important tool in measuring the true damage of a pandemic.

As of July 1, the United States report About 127,000 people were killed by the coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University trackers.