Does the WHO’s excess deaths data vindicate the UK pandemic response?

The UK had a lower excess death rate as a result of Covid-19 than Italy, Germany and Spain, according to new data from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The latest figures also show that between January 2020 and December 2021, coronavirus caused almost three times more deaths worldwide than previously reported, putting the total international death toll at just short of 15 million people.

WHO figures

According to the latest data from the WHO, the UK had 109 excess deaths per 100,000 people per year over the two-year period since Covid-19 began spreading.

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This compares with 133 for Italy, 116 in Germany and 111 in Spain. Some European nations had lower death rates than the UK, including France (63) and Ireland (29).

Some countries’ reported death tolls varied wildly from the WHO’s estimate. For instance, the Indian government claimed it has suffered fewer than 500,000 extra deaths, but the WHO said that the real figure was nearly five million.

In contrast, the UK government had estimated about 150,000 excess deaths and the WHO’s calculation was virtually the same.

Pandemic response

Some have said the data from the WHO vindicates the UK government’s response to the pandemic, arguing that the nation’s death rate is comparable to other nations’.

The Daily Mail said the stats contradict “widely-publicised claims by zealous scientists and MPs” that the UK “endured one of the biggest death tolls on the continent”, adding that these “doom-mongers” were trying to encourage “tougher restrictions”.

“Countries were previously judged by Covid death rates alone,” the paper added, “which skewed Britain’s tally because it was testing more than anywhere else”.

Sweden, which shunned most lockdown restrictions and had an excess death rate of 56 per 100,000, has also been vindicated by the data, The Telegraph claimed.

The Scandinavian country was criticised in the early stages of the pandemic for not imposing a mandatory lockdown, but “we in Britain should ask whether more lives might have been saved” had the government “not enforced a compulsory lockdown”, the paper said.

The government in Stockholm “rejected most over-the-top legally-binding Covid measures throughout the pandemic”, political news site Guido Fawkes said, but its excess death toll was almost half the UK’s.

These arguments will loom large when the first public hearings in the Covid-19 inquiry begin next year, led by former appeal court judge Baroness Heather Hallett.

The topics that are likely to be explored include the use of public health powers and medical expertise and evidence; health and social care policy (including test and trace and the vaccines roll-out); the impact of Covid on education and childcare; and the pandemic’s economic impacts.

WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the “sobering data” points to the impact of the pandemic itself, “but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems” to “sustain essential health services during crises”.

Dr Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, the medical research charity, told The Times: “There have been too many times in the past two years when world leaders have failed to act at the level needed to save lives”, warning that “even now a third of the world’s population remains unvaccinated”.

“More must be done to protect people from the ongoing pandemic and shield humanity against future risks.”