An ambitious effort by the WHO to calculate the global death toll from the pandemic has found a total of about 15 million died by 2021 end, more than double the official total of 6 million reported by countries individually. But the release of the staggering estimate has been delayed for months because of objections from India
Covid patients receive oxygen provided by a Sikh house of worship on a street in New Delhi, April 25, 2021. The World Health Organization has calculated that 15 million people have died as a result of the pandemic, far more than earlier estimates, but the release of those numbers has been delayed for months because of objections from India, which disputes the calculation of how many of its citizens died. (Atul Loke/The New York Times)
An ambitious effort by the World Health Organization to calculate the global death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has found that vastly more people died than previously believed — a total of about 15 million by the end of 2021, more than double the official total of 6 million reported by countries individually.
But the release of the staggering estimate — the result of more than a year of research and analysis by experts around the world and the most comprehensive look at the lethality of the pandemic to date — has been delayed for months because of objections from India, which disputes the calculation of how many of its citizens died and has tried to keep it from becoming public.
©2019 New York Times News Service