The Economist has launched their own data investigation into the pandemic
The pandemic has undeniably battered the world. But sometimes, it can be difficult to look beyond your countries bubble, not necessarily because you are selfish, but because your focus is on the fight here at home. But when you look at the global pandemic picture, it paints a grim picture of the destruction Covid-19 has wrought.
The Economist has reported the excess mortality rate, a set of data calculated by collating statistics from the average mortality rate and juxtaposing it with the current data sets. It is important to mention that the excess mortality rate considers demographic changes, therefore giving a more realistic data impression.
South Africa, for instance, reported 55,000 covid deaths from March 27th last year, which puts the mortality rate at 92.7 per 100,000 people. However, public health officials believe this number is actually much higher. The country recorded a staggering 158,499 deaths, of which 85-95 per cent are said to be related to covid.
So, where does this discrepancy come from?
In South Africa, for a death to be registered as caused by Covid, the deceased needs to have had a covid test while also being recorded as having died from the virus. Although higher than neighbouring countries, South Africa’s testing rate is still below the average of other nations. As of the 15th of July, South Africa is testing 977.00 people per million, but for comparison, the UK is testing 16,030 per million, Tunisia 1,851, Singapore 15,501, and Malta 7,476.
Though the data is somewhat confusing at first, it does show an interesting aspect of Covid related deaths. Here in the UK, we saw excess deaths higher than official covid-19 deaths during its first wave but lower than the official covid death rates in the second. This shows that show that measures to stop the spread of covid had saved lives which in another year would have been lost to other diseases.
But the excess mortality rate data sets has highlighted how disadvantaged developing nations are when it comes to combatting covid. The issue lies with the fact that most governing bodies use this data to illustrate global deaths, which currently sits at just over 4m.
The Economist reports that most deaths caused by Covid (but not attributed to it) are from low-income and developing nations. They estimate that the death rate in Sub-Saharan Africa is actually fourteen times more than official reports. They also say that the “Wave” system we use here in the west cannot be applied to other parts of the world.
When drawing their own conclusions they used statistics from 121 indicators for more than 200 countries and territories, which they then fed into a machine learning model.
“The finished model used those relationships to provide estimates of excess deaths in times and places for which there were no data available.”
They drew upon official Covid death reports, seroprevalence surveys, demographics, and government moves to combat the virus to collate the data. They deduced that a higher youth percentage meant fewer deaths, but they took it one step further.
Excess deaths in Russia are 5.1 times greater than official covid deaths, attributed to government systems and their degree of media freedom.
They conclude with:
“We estimate that, by May 10th, there was a 95% probability that the pandemic had brought about between 2.4m and 7.1m excess deaths in Asia (official covid-19 deaths: 0.6m), 1.5m-1.8m deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean (v 0.6m), 0-2.1m deaths in Africa (v 0.1m), 1.5m-1.6m deaths in Europe (v 1.0m) and 0.6m-0.7m deaths in America and Canada (v 0.6m).
“In Oceania, with only 1,218 official deaths, the model predicted somewhere between -12,000 and 13,000, the lower bound reflecting the possibility that precautions against covid-19 had reduced deaths from other causes.”
