The British newspaper “Financial Times” published an analysis of emerging coronavirus statistics in 14 countries, prepared by journalists “John Byrne Murdoch”, “Valentina Rumi” and “Chris Giles”, in which they concluded that pandemic deaths, globally, may be 60 percent more Than advertised.

Statistics of the analysis show 122 thousand deaths in those countries combined, while the officially announced does not exceed 77 thousand deaths.

If we reverse this ratio globally, the total number of pandemic deaths becomes 318,000, instead of the officially announced 201,000, until the analysis is prepared.

To calculate the increase in the number of deaths, the newspaper compared death figures during the outbreak weeks in March and April with the death rate for the same period between 2015 to 2019.

The 122,000 deaths reflect an increase of 50 percent compared to the historical average in the areas studied.

In all countries studied, with the exception of Denmark, the official figures for corona deaths do not reflect the increase in the annual mortality rate.

The accuracy of mortality statistics depends on the effectiveness of screening programs in those countries to confirm the cases, and some countries, including China, have reviewed death statistics due to disease.

According to the analysis of the “Financial Times”, the number of deaths in general increased by 60 percent in Belgium, 51 percent in Spain, 42 percent in the Netherlands and 34 percent in France during the pandemic period compared to the same period in previous years.

Some of these deaths may be due to causes other than “Covid-19”, as people avoid hospitals for treatment for other diseases. However, the increase in deaths was severe in areas that had suffered from a major outbreak of the virus, indicating that most of these deaths were due to it, and not just side effects of the closures.

The newspaper quotes David Spiegelholter, professor of statistics and general understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, that the daily statistics in the United Kingdom, for example, were “very low”, because they only include hospital deaths.

He said: “The only unbiased comparison that you can make between different countries is looking at deaths from any causes … There are many questions about the rise that we have seen in deaths that did not include a death certificate, yet you feel it must It is related to the epidemic in one form or another. “

Excess deaths are most pronounced in civilian areas where the virus outbreak is the worst, and reporting mechanisms have been completely overwhelmed. This is particularly worrying for developing countries, where the excess mortality is much greater than the official figures for Corona virus death.

 In the Guayas region of Ecuador, only 245 deaths of Covid-19 disease were officially reported between 1 March and 15 April, but data show 10 thousand and 200 deaths in excess during this period over the past years mortality rate – an increase of 350 percent.

In the northern Lombardy region of Italy, which was the heart of the worst outbreak in Europe, there are more than 13,000 excess deaths over the annual official statistics in 1700 municipalities whose data are available. This is a 155 percent increase over the historical death rate and much larger than the 4,348 deaths officially reported.

 The region surrounding the Italian city of Bergamo recorded the worst increase internationally, as there was a 464 percent increase in deaths from normal levels.

In the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, burial data shows an increase of 1,400 over the historical average for the same period – 15 times more than the official figure of 90 deaths due to Covid-19 for the same period.

The challenge is not confined to developing countries. In England and Wales, the number of deaths in the week ending April 10 was the largest in a century. The ratio was 76 percent greater than the same-week average over the past five years and the number of excess deaths was 58 percent more than the official statistic of Covid-19 deaths for the same period.

David Lyon, a professor of epidemiology at the University of London’s School of Tropical Medicine, is quoted as saying: “If we want to [understand] the ways in which different countries of the pandemic have responded and how [the pandemic] affected people’s health, the best way is to count excess deaths.”

Experts have warned of the underreporting of Covid-19 deaths in homes of the elderly, who are at greater risk of being affected by the virus. “It appears that very few countries are conducting checks in the homes of the elderly in a systematic manner for workers or residents,” said Adelina Kumas-Herrera, research fellow at the Center for Care Policy and Evaluation of the School of Economics in London.

Even those numbers that calculate differences with annual rates, they also may be conservative, according to the analysis, since closures mean that “deaths from many situations such as traffic accidents and work accidents may have decreased”, according to Markita Beckholdova, associate professor of demography at the University of Economics in Prague.