Do we know the real number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in the US?
By: Sergei Ananyan, Ph.D.
CEO, Megaputer Intelligence
Published: May 25, 2020 | Updated October 22, 2020
The goal of this research is to determine how accurate are the reported COVID death numbers across individual US states and the USA as a whole. We first check if there are any significant deviations of the non-COVID-related death numbers in different states from the expected values.
We downloaded the data on non-COVID deaths per month for individual US states during the past fourteen years (2005-2018) from the site of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) (https://wonder.cdc.gov/). We used this data to calculate the mean of mortality rate for all US states for different months and the corresponding dispersion during the fourteen-year time period. Then we calculated the expected numbers of non-COVID deaths for the first six months when COVID had significant presence in the USA: we considered the time period March through August 2020 (because the final numbers of non-COVID deaths for September and October had not been processed by CDC yet). In this calculation we used the numbers for the population of individual US states provided by US Census.
Then we compared these expected non-COVID death numbers with the actual non-COVID death numbers recorded by CDC. Our analysis revealed that during the considered time period of pandemic a large number of US states had unprecedent upward deviations (over three standard deviations) of the number of actually reported non-COVID deaths by month compared to the expected number of non-COVID deaths based on the CDC data for the past 14 years. The first spike in such deviations was in April of 2020 (led by the states of New York and New Jersey and including 20 states altogether). Then over the next three months (May through July) the situation started to improve, with a smaller number of states demonstrating significant upward deviations in the number of non-COVID deaths. But in August 2020 the situation got out of control again, and at a larger scale, with 26 US states having unprecedent upward deviations from the expected numbers of Regular deaths (led this time by Arizona, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Tennessee, and South Carolina).
Fig 1. Evolution from March to August 2020 of actual/expected non-COVID deaths ratio
We can assume that the excess in non-COVID deaths in the states with the highest upward deviations in the reported non-COVID deaths from the expected numbers is due entirely to missing COVID as the probable cause of the excess deaths. Our calculations revealed a disturbing recent growth trend in the share of unreported COVID deaths across individual states and the USA as a whole. While in April 2020 the ratio of unreported COVID deaths to reported COVID deaths was about 39%, then dropping to 23% in May, 10% in June and 15% in July, in August this ratio suddenly jumped to almost 74% (or 21,000 unreported COVID-related deaths).
Fig 2. Under-reported COVID deaths distribution by month and state
For the time period March-August 2020, the total number of additional unreported COVID-related deaths was calculated to be 64,000, which should be added to 183,000 of reported COVID deaths. Thus, the real death toll from COVID across the USA for these months was 247,000 people, or 35% higher than reported number of 183,000. We can assume that this ratio remains in September and October between 35% and 74% (because the absolute numbers of new daily cases remain high). Then a simple calculation shows that the current (as of October 22) total US death toll from COVID is between 300,000 and 386,000 people (significantly more than 222,000 officially recorded COVID deaths).
Fig 3. US states with the highest numbers of unreported COVID deaths (March through August 2020)
We hope our healthcare decision makers are aware of the correct COVID death numbers, so that they will be fully prepared for treating a larger number of serious COVID cases than was previously anticipated.
Megaputer Intelligence Inc. is providing the most up-to-date results for corrected COVID-19 death tallies online using an interactive graphical report. Click to explore the results yourself.