WHO "COVID-19 has claimed 15 million lives over 2 years"

Death Toll 2.5 Times Higher Than WHO Official Count
Bloomberg: Over One-Third Likely from 'India'

A medical staff member working in a COVID-19 ward. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Intern Reporter Kim Se-eun] It has been revealed that nearly 15 million people worldwide have died due to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past two years.

Foreign media such as Bloomberg reported on the 5th (local time), citing the World Health Organization (WHO), that the number of deaths directly or indirectly caused by COVID-19 is 14.9 million, and considering the margin of error, it ranges from 13.3 million to as many as 16.6 million.

Calculating the world population at 7.9 billion, this means approximately one in every 500 people lost their lives.

This figure is 2.5 times the cumulative COVID-19 death toll of about 6.24 million reported by the WHO.

The WHO explained, "The new death figures on the 5th include not only COVID-19 patients but also patients who died from other diseases due to lack of treatment caused by poor healthcare environments."

Meanwhile, Bloomberg estimated that more than one-third of the additional deaths occurred in India.

Earlier, the New York Times (NYT) and others reported in April that the Indian government had disputed the WHO's method of counting COVID-19 deaths and deliberately delayed the release of the report.

At that time, the Indian government announced that about 520,000 people had died from COVID-19 but did not submit the full death data to the WHO.

Subsequently, the WHO estimated through its own collected data that at least 4 million people had died in India.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.