Twice as many pandemic victims as indicated by official data
23:45
According to official announcements, almost 72,000 people have died from Covid-19 in Poland since the beginning of the pandemic. However, various sources suggest that official statistics are underestimated. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent facility at the University of Washington, has just published a report which shows that the actual number of deaths caused by the pandemic in Poland is over 150,000.
"In Poland, deaths are classified as covid only on the basis of test results. The official statistics do not include people with symptoms who did not see a doctor. Documents show covid death into, for example, circulatory or respiratory failure," Dr. Aneta Afelt from Interdisciplinary Center for Mathematical and Computational Modeling of the University of Warsaw, said.
"The second category may be people who have had the test, but the result has already come after completing the death certificate. The third category is the victims of complications. Patients report to the doctor in a serious condition when the virus is no longer in their body, but there are its consequences, pneumonia, for example, and it is conditions that develop as a result of complications that become the official cause of death," she added.
Almost 3.5 million people have officially died worldwide due to coronavirus infection, but the IHME believes that there are at least twice as many deaths. Poland is therefore third in terms of coronavirus deaths of the European countries, after the UK where, according to scientists, 210,000 people died (but 67 million people live there), and Italy (178,000 deaths with 60 million inhabitants). Taking into account the number of inhabitants, according to the IHME, Poland is in 13th place in terms of the actual number of deaths due to the pandemic per 100,000 people. Among the EU countries, only Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Lithuania have worse statistics.
