Month: May 2022

GENEVA— The Covid-19 pandemic killed 13.3 to 16.6 million people in 2020 and 2021, the WHO estimated — up to triple the number of deaths attributed directly to the disease.

The World Health Organization’s long-awaited estimate of the total number of deaths caused by the pandemic — including lives lost to its knock-on effects — finally puts a number on the broader impact of the crisis.

“New estimates from the World Health Organization show that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the Covid-19 pandemic between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021 was approximately 14.9 million (range

13.3 million to 16.6 million),” the UN health agency said in a statement.

The figure calculates what is termed as excess mortality due to the Covid-19 crisis, which has upended much of the planet for more than two years.

“These sobering data not only point to the impact of the pandemic but also to the need for all countries to invest in more resilient health systems that can sustain essential health services during crises, including stronger health information systems,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said.

Excess mortality is calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that have occurred and the number that would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic, based on data from earlier years.

Excess mortality includes deaths associated with Covid-19 directly, due to the disease, and indirectly due to the pandemic’s impact on health systems and society.

The WHO declared Covid an international public health emergency on January 30, 2020, after cases of the new coronavirus spread beyond China.

Countries around the world reported 5.42 million Covid-19 deaths to the WHO in 2020 and 2021 — a figure that today stands at 6.24 million, including deaths in 2022.

The Geneva-based organisation has long said the true number of deaths would be far higher than just the recorded fatalities put down to Covid infections.

Deaths linked indirectly to the pandemic are attributable to other conditions for which people were unable to access treatment because health systems were overburdened by the crisis.

The WHO said that most of the excess deaths — 84 percent — were concentrated in southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Indeed, 10 countries alone accounted for 68 percent of all excess deaths.

High-income countries accounted for 15 percent of the excess deaths; upper-middle-income nations 28 percent; lower-middle-income states 53 percent; and low-income countries four percent.

The global death toll was higher for men than for women — 57 percent male, 43 percent female — and higher among older adults.

“Measurement of excess mortality is an essential component to understand the impact of the pandemic,” said Samira Asma, the WHO’s assistant director-general for data, analytics and delivery.

She said changes in mortality trends give decision-makers the information needed to guide practices that can reduce death rates and prevent future crises.

“These new estimates use the best available data and have been produced using a robust methodology and a completely transparent approach.”

The WHO said the 14.9-million figure was produced by leading world experts who developed a methodology to generate estimates where data is lacking.

Many countries do not have the capacity for reliable mortality surveillance and therefore do not generate the data needed to work out excess mortality rates — but can do so using the publicly available methodology.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK

UNITED NATIONS— The United Nations and several countries called for an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, with little mention of reviving the two countries’ apparently stalled peace talks.

“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a violation of its territorial integrity and of the Charter of the United Nations,” said UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres at a Security Council meeting organized by the United States.

“It must end for the sake of the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the entire world,” he added.

Guterres recently visited Moscow and Kyiv to advocate for the evacuation of civilians from the battered port city of Mariupol, from where several hundred people have been able to escape since the weekend.

The majority of the Security Council’s members, including China, the United States, Ireland, France and Mexico called for an end to the months-old conflict.

The Chinese ambassador to the UN Zhang Jun underscored that only diplomacy would end the fighting, criticizing arms shipments to Ukraine.

His Kenyan counterpart Martin Kimani called for Guterres’ mediation.

“Every opportunity must be used to achieve peace,” said Ukraine’s ambassador to the UN Sergiy Kyslytsya.

According to diplomats, non-permanent members of the Security Council Norway and Mexico submitted a text expressing “strong support to the efforts of the Secretary-General and the offer of his good offices in the search for a peaceful solution.”

An adoption of the statement, which would be the first show of unity in the council since Russia’s Feb 24 invasion, remains uncertain.

“There is time,” Deputy Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy commented when asked if Moscow might approve it.

Meanwhile in ZAPORIZHZHIA (Ukraine), a new UN convoy was expected in Mariupol Friday to evacuate civilians from the “bleak hell” of a besieged steel plant that has become the last pocket of resistance against invading Russian forces in the southern port city.

The Russian military had announced a three-day ceasefire at the site starting Thursday but a Ukrainian commander said there was still heavy fighting at the sprawling Azovstal complex, where hundreds of soldiers and civilians have been holed up for weeks under heavy bombardment.

Ten weeks into a war that has killed thousands, destroyed cities and uprooted more than 13 million people, Russia has focused its efforts on Ukraine’s east and south, and taking full control of the now-flattened Mariupol would be a major victory for Moscow.

“A convoy is proceeding to get to Azovstal by tomorrow morning hopefully to receive those civilians remaining in that bleak hell,” UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths told a Ukraine donor conference in Warsaw on Thursday.

The mayor of Mariupol estimates around 200 civilians remain sheltering in dismal conditions in the plant’s Soviet-era underground tunnels.

“We still have to evacuate civilians from there, women and children. Just imagine… more than two months of constant bombing and constant death,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his evening address on Thursday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said “that a safe passage operation is ongoing” in coordination with the UN. The two organisations have already worked together to evacuate some 100 civilians from the complex.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK