NEW YORK (AP) — A recent study highlights that the early death toll from COVID-19 in the U.S. was significantly higher than the official numbers reported. The study reveals substantial gaps in uncounted deaths.
In 2020 and 2021, approximately 840,000 COVID-19 deaths were documented on death certificates. However, researchers utilizing artificial intelligence estimate an additional 155,000 deaths likely went unrecognized, occurring outside hospital settings. This suggests that around 16% of COVID-19 deaths were not accounted for during those years.
The findings, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, align closely with other studies’ estimates of pandemic fatalities during that period. The researchers focused on identifying which deaths were most likely missing from official statistics.
The study revealed that those undiagnosed were predominantly Hispanic and people of color, who died during the initial months of the pandemic, particularly in Southern and Southwestern states such as Alabama, Oklahoma, and South Carolina.
Steven Woolf, a researcher at Virginia Commonwealth University who was not involved in the study, noted that six years after COVID-19 swept across the U.S., significant barriers still affect these communities.
“People on the margins continue to die at disproportionate rates because they can’t access care,” he mentioned in an email.
AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File
Access to care wasn’t the only challenge
While hospitals routinely tested their patients for COVID-19, many individuals who became ill and died outside of hospitals were not tested, often due to the unavailability of at-home tests in the pandemic’s early stages, explained Elizabeth Wrigley-Field from the University of Minnesota, one of the study’s authors.
In certain regions, death investigations are conducted by elected coroners who may lack the specialized medical training of examiners. Some research suggests political opinions might have influenced whether sick individuals or their families sought COVID-19 testing, and whether coroners opted for postmortem tests. Some families reportedly pressured coroners not to list COVID-19 as a cause of death.
“Our antiquated death investigation system is one key reason why we fell short of accurate counts, particularly outside of big metropolitan areas,” stated Andrew Stokes from Boston University, the study’s senior author.
Death counts were swept up in COVID politics
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently reports over 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths since the pandemic began in early 2020, with more than two-thirds occurring in 2020 and 2021.
This count has been contentious, with false claims on social media alleging the figures were inflated. President Donald Trump added to the controversy in August 2020 by retweeting a post that claimed only 6% of reported deaths were due to COVID-19, which was later removed by Twitter.
There were also other types of pandemic deaths—people without COVID-19 died from other medical conditions due to overwhelmed hospitals, and individuals with drug addictions succumbed to overdoses amid isolation and lack of treatment. Other studies estimating pandemic deaths have included these factors.
Stokes and his team, however, concentrated on those who died from coronavirus infections. They used machine learning to analyze death certificates of hospital patients who tested positive and applied these patterns to evaluate certificates of those who died outside hospitals with causes listed as pneumonia or diabetes.
The research community is still exploring the advantages and limitations of machine learning in studies, but Woolf described the team’s approach as “intriguing.”
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
