If we stick to the official figures, the answer is clearly: “yes”. But you must immediately bring some downsides:
1) No, the mortality did not triple in 8 days
Seen from abroad, the death toll may appear to have increased dramatically, as if the virus suddenly broke loose. It would be to forget that we just added to this macabre accounting the people who died in a retirement home, which suddenly swelled the overall toll, while these deaths were spaced apart. These represent no less than 40% of deaths, according to Emmanuel André, inter-federal spokesperson for the crisis center.
2) A count unfavorable to small countries
It is Le Soir which highlighted this in its “True / False” of April 1 : to date, the country with the highest number of deaths per million inhabitants is San Marino: 26 dead in total, or 766 deaths per million inhabitants. From the moment the virus is implanted in an area, it spreads at a fairly similar speed, if nobody prevents it. So in a “small country”, if an outbreak occurs, the mortality rate may seem higher.
3) Density plays an important role
Northern Italy, like Belgium, is a territory with a high population density … and therefore more contacts. Hence a risk of faster spread. As virologist Jean Ruelle explained to Le Moustique, “our territory is small, but very populated. If we look at the distribution of infected people by municipality, we can see very clearly that there is a relationship with the population density. It’s an important factor in propagation. It is therefore absurd to compare our country with the United States for example, which has a much larger territory. Even if the numbers are correct, we can make them say whatever we want.“
4 °) Counting methods distort the game
Finally, and this is perhaps the most important element: the daily counting of the victims of Covid-19, whose official number has exceeded 100,000 deaths, is a delicate exercise, the collection of data in real time being that fragmented and the methods vary by country, as demonstrated by AFP.
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Place of death, way of identifying the causes of death, different timeframes for reporting information: several elements can have an impact on these accounts, which are necessarily undervalued but essential for monitoring the evolution of the pandemic.
This is a real “statistical challenge“, emphasizes the French institute for demographic studies, INED.
Hospitals and retirement homes
While Spain and South Korea count all deaths of people who test positive for Covid-19, whether in or out of the hospital, this is not the case in all countries. Iranian figures, for example, appear to include only hospital deaths.
Until recently, deaths in retirement homes were also not included in official French and British figures. However, they are far from being marginal, since they now represent more than a third of the balance sheet in France.
In the United States, the deaths taken into account vary from state to state: New York State includes retirement homes, California does not.
Even in Italy, which officially has the heaviest death toll in the world (more than 18,000 dead), not all deaths in retirement homes have been recorded. If a large epidemic focus is detected in an establishment, tests are carried out and deaths counted, but if an establishment is less affected, it is likely that this will not be the case, explains the Civil Protection.
Covid-19 or some other disease?
While some countries, such as South Korea, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom, include in their figures all people who tested positive for coronavirus, even those who died from complications of a preexisting disease, other countries are more selective.
In Iran, patients tested positive but dying from another are excluded from the assessments “severe respiratory illness“.
In the United States, there are increasing testimonies from people whose relatives have died, officially of pneumonia, before the tests were available or at a time when they were difficult to obtain.
Lack of tests and deadlines
During an epidemic, “the feedback and processing of information, even accelerated, is done with a few days delay and does not cover all deaths. It takes several weeks or months to be able to accurately count all the dead“, say Gilles Pison and France Meslé, demographers at INED, on The Conversation website.
In the United States, even if there is no test, death certificates must state if Covid-19 is the cause “likely“of death, but these certificates take a long time to go up and cannot be taken into account for the real-time reviews.
In Spain, the civil status registers and the number of burials show an excess mortality much higher than that which should result from the official balance sheet of the Covid-19.
Due to lack of tests, Spain performs very few post-mortem screenings. Thus, if a person has not been screened before dying, he is not counted by the health authorities. Judicial data, which is less restrictive, suggests a much better balance sheet: for example, the Superior Court of Castile-La Mancha registered in March 1921 death certificates “whose cause is due to the Covid or to a suspicion of Covid“, almost three times more than the 708 dead (Covid-19 positive) listed on March 31 by health authorities.
Another illustration: in Bergamo, in Lombardy, were recorded, during the first half of March, 108 more deaths (+ 193%) than a year earlier … but only 31 deaths linked to Covid-19.
China, Iran accused of lying
Sometimes the very sincerity of the figures published is called into question.
In Iran, official reports have been disputed, particularly at the start of the epidemic, by provincial officials and parliamentarians. Even the official agency Irna has sometimes released figures higher than those of the authorities, the balance sheets then denied by the government. Outside the country, Washington, in particular, criticized Tehran for making up its numbers.
Regarding China, the cradle of the epidemic, a confidential American intelligence report, quoted by the Bloomberg agency, accused Beijing to have intentionally undervalued its balance sheet. His figures were also questioned by several Iranian officials, but the health ministry spokesman was forced to correct his remarks after describing the Chinese record as “bad taste joke
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