Im ersten Jahr der Pandemie könnten fast 156.000 Amerikaner mehr an COVID-19 gestorben sein als offiziell gemeldet. In den Südstaaten blieben COVID-19-Todesfälle am häufigsten unerkannt. Die geschätzte Zahl der COVID-19-Todesfälle war in der Region West-Süd-Zentral um 31 % höher als offiziell gemeldet

Nearly 156,000 more Americans may have died of COVID-19 in the first year of the pandemic than officially reported, with disparities by race, education, and other factors, a machine-learning study estimates.

For the study, published yesterday in Science Advances, a team led by a Stanford University investigator used machine learning (artificial intelligence) trained on US death certificates to predict unrecognized COVID-19 fatalities from March 2020 to December 2021.

They estimated unrecognized COVID-19 deaths using the predicted number of such deaths in out-of-hospital settings and an adjusted reporting ratio (ARR) that estimated underreporting of COVID-19 deaths in all settings. They did so by weighting the estimated degree of misclassification of COVID-19 fatalities in non-hospital settings by the proportion of deaths that occurred in non-hospital settings. 

Most research on unrecognized US COVID-19 deaths has relied on excess-mortality models, which estimate deaths attributable to the pandemic by comparing observed all-cause deaths to those expected based on prepandemic trends, the researchers said. All-cause death data also include fatalities from external causes, such as injuries, unlikely to be caused by COVID-19 in the short term. 

A 2021 study by Boston University researchers reached a similar conclusion, estimating that COVID-19 killed 20% more Americans—particularly racial minorities—than officially reported. The authors of that study said the findings, published in PLOS Medicine, underscore the need to adapt policies to address deepening racial and sociodemographic disparities.

Previous studies with different modeling specifications have estimated that excess deaths surpassed those of reported COVID-19 deaths in 2020 by 28%, 38%, and 14%.

“Accurate and timely mortality statistics are critical for health system responses during public health emergencies,” the authors of the new study wrote. “Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (US), official COVID-19 mortality reporting was often delayed or incomplete.”

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aef5697