Covid-19, two million deaths in Europe and one million in the United States
Rights — di Andrea Barolini
According to the WHO, at a global level, Covid-19 has killed a far higher number of people than the figures reported by governments.
Covid-19, two million deaths in Europe and one million in the United States
According to the WHO, at a global level, Covid-19 has killed a far higher number of people than the figures reported by governments.
The number of people killed by Covid-19 in Europe has passed the symbolic threshold of 2 million people. Out of a total of more than 218 million cases recorded across the Old Continent. This was announced on Thursday 12 May by the World Health Organisation (WHO), whose calculation is based on information provided by individual governments.
218 million cases of Covid-19 in Europe
The pandemic has thus proved devastating, though not to the same extent as in the United States. On Monday 9 May, the bells of Washington Cathedral rang out at length — not to announce a celebration, but to commemorate another threshold crossed: the American nation had surpassed one million deaths attributed to Covid-19, in approximately two and a half years.
According to the American broadcaster NBC, the figure had been exceeded by several days, but the official announcement from the White House came on the morning of 12 May. It confirms a mortality rate considerably higher than, for example, the European one.
Obesity and diabetes cases weigh heavily in the United States
The United States is in fact the first country in the world to have surpassed one million deaths. We are talking about the third most populous country in the world, with approximately 330 million people, Forbes reports, accounting for 4 per cent of the world's population. Yet its deaths represent 16 per cent of the total deaths attributed to the pandemic worldwide.
The data, however, require contextual analysis. First and foremost, many have raised doubts about the accuracy of the figures provided by some large nations, in particular India, Russia and China. It can in any case be stated that the number of American deaths is certainly higher than that of European nations. This could be explained by the fact that in the United States a considerably higher proportion of the population suffers from obesity and diabetes — two conditions that increase the risk of death in the event of infection.
"At a global level, the pandemic has killed between 13.3 and 16.6 million people"
But more generally, it should be noted that the figures provided by governments may have significantly distorted the global total. The pandemic, in fact, would have killed a far higher number of people than official figures suggest. This is confirmed by a new estimate from the WHO itself, according to which between 13.3 and 16.6 million people have succumbed to the coronavirus.
WHO data shows the number of excess COVID mortalities to be somewhere between 13.3 million and 16.6 million people from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021 trib.al/aNRep41
These are figures that come close to those provided by a study published on 10 March in the scientific journal The Lancet, which had spoken of 18 million deaths worldwide.