Establishing which deaths which were indirectly caused by COVID-19 because of failed health-care systems and how many people would have died anyway may take months or years
An aerial view of Vila Formosa cemetery during a burial amid the coronavirus pandemic in São Paulo, Brazil. Photo: Miguel Schincariol/Getty Images Less than two weeks ago, Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera published the results of an informal study that appeared to show that, in some regions of the country, non-coronavirus deaths were rising at an alarming rate alongside confirmed COVID-19 deaths — that the total death count was up as much as sixfold from previous years.
The answer to those questions is a matter of the balance of two factors: How many “excess deaths” are patients who have COVID-19 but haven’t been diagnosed with it, and how many are patients with other illnesses who can’t get proper treatment in overwhelmed hospital systems? Ultimately, both factors will significantly increase the pandemic’s death toll; the only question is by what factor. Since the initial report out of Italy, follow-up studies have estimated the death toll in the country’s most affected regions could be anywhere from three to ten times higher than what’s been officially reported.
“It is a classic problem when resources are so overwhelmed and not prepared that you don’t know how to rationally allocate resources. You end up making a lot of mistakes,” said Francesco Checchi, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who studies mortality in crisis-affected populations.
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