SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – As news and public health organizations' counts of the COVID-19 pandemic's death toll in the U.S. come close to eclipsing 1 million, World Health Organization data released on Thursday suggests the country has already surpassed the grim milestone.
For more, stream KCBS Radio now.
The United Nations agency said it estimates nearly 15 million more people died around the world in 2020 and 2021 than would have been expected in the pandemic’s absence, a calculation that includes people dying of the disease or the pandemic’s impact on public health systems. There were an estimated 932,460 excess deaths in the U.S. by the end of 2021, according to the data.
By contrast, the California Department of Finance estimated at the beginning of 2022 that San Jose – the Bay Area's largest city – had a population of 976,482.
"It's not so much where we are as where we've been," Dr. George Rutherford, Director of the Prevention and Public Health Group at UCSF, said of the data during an interview with KCBS Radio's Jason Brooks and Holly Quan on Thursday morning.
"As we've said all along, this is a severe disease. It's not like seasonal influenza. These are huge death tolls."
The U.S. had the fourth-most estimated excess deaths behind India (4.7 million), Russia (1.1 million) and Indonesia (1 million), and more estimated excess deaths per 100,000 people (140) than any other Group of Seven country.
Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom had all fully vaccinated a higher percentage of their populations by the end of 2021, according to Our World In Data. The U.S. – with 66.2% of its population fully vaccinated as of Wednesday – has yet to match its G7 peers' vaccination rates from the end of last year, let alone where they are in 2022.
In all, 68% of the excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 occurred in the U.S. and nine other countries. That doesn't account for the deadly omicron wave, which spiked earlier this year, nor does it include the effects of loosening public health measures across the country since the start of 2022.
"This is a serious problem that's caused severe morbidity and mortality in the United States, in California, in the Bay Area," Rutherford said. "As all public health is local, it’s up to us to take the precautions that we know we need to take as the viruses circulate more, as we churn through new variants."
LISTEN to KCBS Radio
FAVORITE KCBS Radio
Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
