COVID-19 death tolls likely a ‘significant undercount’: WHO

Number of people who died from direct, indirect effects of pandemic may be up to 3 times higher than reported.

Official tolls showing the number of deaths directly or indirectly attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be a “significant undercount”, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), which said between six and eight million people might have died so far. As of Friday, more than 3.4 million deaths worldwide have officially been attributed to the disease since it first surfaced in China in late 2019. However, according to a global health statistics report from the WHO released on the same day, far more people have died than would otherwise not have, had it not been for the pandemic.