Widespread COVID Death Underreporting Around the World Raises Broader Questions About the Reliability of Official Information

Widespread COVID death underreporting around the world raises broader questions

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world faced the same basic challenge: measuring a fast-moving public health crisis and communicating its severity to citizens.

Widespread COVID death underreporting around the world raises broader questions about the reliability of official information

New study finds that widespread underreporting of Covid-19 deaths cannot be explained simply by differences in countries’ ability to count and record deaths. Across 134 countries and territories, an estimated 45%–55% of governments misreported Covid mortality, with underreporting far more common than overreporting. The study provides comparable country-level data of the extent of misinformation for researchers and policymakers. The findings poin…

Global COVID death underreporting casts doubt on official data reliability

During the Covid-19 pandemic, governments around the world confronted an unprecedented challenge: measuring a fast-moving public-health crisis in real time and communicating its severity honestly to their citizens and to the international community. Every country was asked to perform essentially the same task—count its dead and report the numbers. Yet the data that emerged varied […]