European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) is a European Agency aiming to strengthening the community’s health defenses. It therefore involves itself in a wide range of activities, including surveillance, epidemic intelligence, response, scientific advice, microbiology, and preparedness. ECDC published an update of COVID-19 status worldwide on June 20, 2022, and we relay the core information here.
Data From Update of Worldwide COVID-19 Status
The data flowing out of this research can be mind-numbing, unless we focus on the human angle. Because the total number of confirmed COVID cases across all nations is now over 535 million, of whom over 6 million died.
We can only glimpse the human tragedy behind these numbers. And we can only begin to imagine how many million more kids are wandering streets after their parents died. Or for that matter, how many million family bread-winners lost their jobs and sank into deep depression.
It’s abundantly evident there was a massive global surge over the 2021 / 2022 holiday season. But we can clearly see how Omicron bailed us out just in time, leaving us wondering what if, this had not happened.
But There Are Uncounted Deaths Behind the Data
However, what we glimpsed above is not the whole picture. That’s because there are many more COVID related deaths than the above graphic reflects. These fall into two categories.
Firstly, there are COVID deaths that were not reported, or were described as other illnesses. And secondly, there were people who died of other illnesses, because they feared going to hospital while the pandemic was raging.
Medical scientists refer to the latter morbidities as excess deaths. These are the number of people who died in excess of the historic trend. It’s a crude measure, but it is the best mechanism we have of the tragedy we are only emerging from now.
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