This morning, we're releasing a major change in our COVID-19 model ( http://covid19.healthdata.org ). We're now incorporating excess mortality to approximate the total COVID-19 death rate worldwide.
Our understanding of the magnitude of COVID-19 to date has been much worse than what we have been thinking. We are also extending our COVID-19 projections out to September 1, 2021 (they previously went out to August 1, 2021).
With this total COVID-19 mortality adjustment, these are the countries that we estimate currently have the highest total COVID-19 deaths .vs. reported COVID-19 deaths:
What kind of statistical methods are we using to calculate total COVID-19 mortality? Dr. Murray explains:
Reported COVID-19 mortality is strongly related to how much testing a country has done. So total COVID-19 mortality includes predicted ratios, and we've used these kinds of statistical methods in our annual #GBDstudy.
Key takeaways on our new modeling approach outlined below. To watch the full video of Dr. Murray discussing total COVID-19 mortality, visit: https://bit.ly/IHME-Episodes
Our press release on this major update to our modeling methods https://www.healthdata.org/news-release/covid-19-has-caused-69-million-deaths-globally-more-double-what-official-reports-show
Detailed description of our new excess mortality methods http://www.healthdata.org/special-analysis/estimation-excess-mortality-due-covid-19-and-scalars-reported-covid-19-deaths