The World Health Organization (WHO) published its international COVID-19 death toll estimate, spanning from January 2020 to May 2022, revealing that official state numbers, including Morocco’s, may be incomplete.
Considering some people may die from COVID-19 complications without being tested for the virus, for instance, official mortality rates issued across the world may not always reflect the true impact of the pandemic.
“Excess mortality includes deaths associated with COVID-19 directly (due to the disease) or indirectly (due to the impact of the pandemic on health systems and society),” says the UN body, explaining that “indirect COVID-related deaths are due to other health problems for which people were unable to access prevention and treatment services because health systems were overburdened by the pandemic.”
One way to understand the difference between official numbers and the actual numbers of deaths due to COVID-19 is to estimate the increase in mortality during the pandemic period.
According to WHO, the methodology used to obtain these estimates is detailed in its reports, where the organization explains that their pandemic deaths’ tracking takes other fatalities into account, as “those who died without testing, are contingent on the country correctly defining COVID as the cause-of-death and they miss the increases in other deaths that are related to the pandemic leading to overwhelmed health systems or patients avoiding care.”
“A few countries have experienced lower than expected total deaths during the pandemic due to reduced contact and reduced mobility,” says the WHO, clarifying that if it were not for preventative measures, especially during peaks, the death toll would have and sometimes is more significant.
The UN agency compared the mortality trends in each country with what was actually recorded. In other words, the numbers of all deaths, for whatever reason, were established and compared with the normal numbers. The difference between the two provides excess mortality that is certainly closer to reality than the official figures.
The total number of deaths directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic ( excess mortality) between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021 worldwide is approximately 14.9 million (with a range of 13.3 million to 16.6 million). Officially, the number of deaths is 5.5 million, meaning the WHO estimates the death toll to being nearly triple the reported figures.
In Africa, the number of probable deaths, calculated according to the WHO method, is 1.24 million instead of the 230,000 officially declared at the end of December 2021, that constitutes a 5 times difference. The average excess mortality on the continent is 61 people per 100,000 population. At the global level, this average is 82 deaths per 100,000. This excess mortality includes both official figures and additional figures not attributed to COVID-19.
Concerning Morocco, from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, the official number of deaths due to COVID-19 was reported to be 14,849, whereas the WHO estimates deaths were a little over double the official figure, set at 34,748. In Morocco, the UN organism found the estimate is around a total of 47 deaths per 100,000 from the population.
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