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Death tolls of COVID-19: Where come the fallacies and ways to make them more accurate

Timothy P H Lin1, Kelvin H Wan2, Suber S Huang3,4

  • 1Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China.

Global Public Health
|August 14, 2020
PubMed

Insights

Estimating the true coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) death toll is complex due to undercounting and data manipulation. Accurate statistics are crucial for effective pandemic policy.

Area of Science:

  • Epidemiology
  • Public Health Policy

Background:

  • The reported death toll for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been subject to significant controversy since its emergence.
  • Underestimation of COVID-19 deaths is attributed to factors like insufficient testing and fatalities occurring outside healthcare facilities.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analyze the challenges and strategies involved in accurately estimating the COVID-19 death toll.
  • To highlight the impact of political influence and data manipulation on reported mortality figures.

Main Methods:

  • Reviewing the causes of underestimation, including under-testing and deaths outside hospitals.
  • Examining the effects of revised diagnostic criteria and political manipulation on death statistics.
  • Proposing the use of baseline mortality data from previous years for more accurate estimations.

Main Results:

  • Under-testing and deaths outside hospitals lead to underestimation of the true COVID-19 death toll.
  • Governmental revisions of diagnostic criteria and political manipulation of data significantly impact reported figures.
  • Baseline mortality data offers a potential method for more accurate death toll assessments.

Conclusions:

  • Accurate COVID-19 statistics are essential for informed policy decisions during the pandemic.
  • Understanding the pitfalls in data collection and reporting is vital for global public health leadership.
  • Lessons learned from estimating COVID-19 mortality can guide future pandemic responses.

Keywords:
COVID-19case definitiondeath tollinfectious diseasemortality

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