Official COVID-19 Death Tolls Still Under-Count the True Number of Fatalities

“Excess Mortality”: is the gap between the total number of people who died from any cause and the historical average for the same place and time of year. The chart above uses data from EuroMOMO, a network of epidemiologists who collect weekly reports on deaths from all causes in 24 European countries, covering 350 million people.

Compared to the baseline average of deaths from 2009-19, the flu seasons of 2017, 2018, and 2019 were all unusually lethal. But the COVID-19 pandemic, which arrived much later in the year, has already reached a higher peak—and would have been far more damaging without social-distancing measures. Compared with the baseline, EuroMOMO’s figures suggest that there were about 70,000 excess deaths between March 16th and April 12th, 2020. 

Source: The Economist – Tracking covid-19 excess deaths across countries