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	The world has recorded 5 million COVID-19 deaths, but the real toll is likely double that by FT, DW, agencies   Nov. 2021   The world has recorded 5 million COVID-19 deaths. (agencies)   Nearly two years into a pandemic that continues to rage, the world has now reported its 5 millionth COVID-19 death, according to a count of global deaths maintained by Johns Hopkins University.   But official figures reported by national governments fail to capture the true toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. This is because deaths are only included in the tally if COVID-19 is officially determined to have been a factor.   Yet many people have died without ever knowing they have the virus. Others who died from non-COVID causes may not have done so if hospital systems had not been so stretched. Other COVID-19 deaths have occurred outside the health system, and were therefore never counted in the official toll.   "People are saying 5 million, but in reality, it's much more than that," says Professor Ali Mokdad from the United States' Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME). "There is a huge difference between what is being reported, and what is out there in terms of the true number of deaths."   The clearer way to understand the death toll of the pandemic is by looking at each nation's "excess deaths". This figure reflects the number of people who have died for any reason since the pandemic began, over and above the average number of people that are expected to die in a typical year.   And many countries — even with no shortage of vaccines — are still recording many more deaths than in the pre-pandemic baseline.   The United States is one of those nations. The US is currently recording as many as 20,000 deaths a week over and above historical norms.   Professor Mokdad estimates that only around 50 per cent of COVID-19 cases are being detected in the United States.   Analysis by The Economist estimates the true global death toll to be somewhere between double and four times the reported figures. This would put the real death toll anywhere between 10.2 million and 19.2 million.   The publication's model puts the most likely figure at more than 16 million deaths, more than triple the figures being reported by authorities.   The country with one of the highest excess death levels through the pandemic is Peru. The country's weak health system played a significant role in the catastrophic outcome. Hospitals were overwhelmed, and demand for oxygen far outstripped supply. According to an article published by The BMJ medical journal, Peru has just 1,656 intensive care beds for its 33 million population.   Earlier this year, the country revised its COVID-19 death toll to almost three times its initial estimate, pushing it to the top of the list of countries with the highest death rate per capita.   The revision followed long-running warnings from experts that COVID-19 deaths were being undercounted. As of this week, more than 200,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Peru, according to the Johns Hopkins tally.   Across the world, COVID-19 testing is also inaccessible for many, leading cases and deaths to go undetected.   "The reality is, not every country is able to do testing appropriately — and it's expensive," Professor Mokdad says, adding that this is a particular issue for poorer nations. This low detection rate, he says, is the key driver for underreporting deaths.   As Europe heads into winter, the region is recording almost one third of the world's officially-reported deaths. Countries on the continent are battling combinations of low vaccination rates (particularly in eastern Europe) and waning immunity in nations that were among the world's fastest to mass vaccinate (particularly in western Europe).   The Financial Times reports that Russia’s excess mortality has soared since start of Covid pandemic - 753,000 more people have died during the pandemic compared with historical trends.   As the pandemic landscape shifts along with growing vaccination rates, experts believes it's crucial to get the statistics right to allow for planning and response to emerging surges in case numbers. Government policy should be informed by timely, reliable information on who's dying of what and how that is changing, they say.   Aug. 2021   Authoritarian states obscuring COVID death tolls, study reveals, reports Deutsche Welle.   A new global database shows a significant gap in reported COVID-related deaths, suggesting the actual worldwide death toll is short by at least 1 million. That's due in part to false figures from autocratic regimes.   Since the start of the pandemic in early 2020, countries around the world have officially reported 4.27 million deaths from COVID-19. However, as widely suspected, these purported numbers are far from accurate.   The World Health Organization (WHO) has said the official global death toll is likely a "significant undercount," meaning that fewer than the actual number of total deaths directly or indirectly attributed to COVID have been recorded. The reasons are manifold, and depend for example on the political situation or the will to publish data at all.   "Many countries still lack functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems with the capacity to provide accurate, complete and timely data on births, deaths and causes of death," the organization said in a report.   To shed more light on the real global death toll, two researchers have compiled the world's largest mortality database comparing reported COVID deaths with the weekly, monthly or quarterly data on deaths from all causes in 103 countries.   "Excess mortality, which is defined as the increase in all-cause mortality relative to the expected mortality, is widely considered as a more objective indicator of the COVID-19 death toll," wrote the authors of the study, Ariel Karlinsky of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dmitry Kobak of the University of Tübingen, in southern Germany.   Their World Mortality Dataset, published this week, estimates there have been at least a million extra deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic — and that's without the data from more than 100 other countries, which was not available.   Authoritarian regimes more likely to report false figures   The gap between the official mortality rate and the actual death toll has already been found to be wider in countries run by authoritarian regimes, when compared to the statistics reported by more democratic countries.   The new global dataset seems to confirm this as well: Austria, Belgium, Germany and France were found to have been relatively accurate in their reporting numbers, which translated to an undercount ratio of less than 1.   By contrast, the highest undercount ratio was found for non-democratic countries like Tajikistan (100), Nicaragua (51), Uzbekistan (31) and Belarus (14). In Egypt, for example, where that ratio was 13, some 6,600 deaths were officially recorded by November 2020, whereas the real mortality was calculated to be at 87,000.   "In authoritarian regimes, transparency is generally not as important as in democratic ones, given the lack of accountability," said Maria Josua, a research fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies in Hamburg.   "In other words, it is fair to assume that many statistics from authoritarian regimes have been embellished, regardless of whether they are about unemployment rates, mortality or excess death rates. Egypt is a particularly blatant example with an extremely high excess death rate and also an extreme cover-up."   Karlinsky said Egypt has a "pretty robust vital registration system in place," and said the high undercount ratio of 13 is likely a deliberate miscalculation, as well as an obvious power projection by the country's authoritarian leaders.   "Egypt's undercount of COVID cases and deaths has long been suspected by many observers including myself," said Timothy Kaldas, a researcher with The Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy. "Excess deaths between May and July of 2020 indicated the undercount was likely massive.   It appears that the Egyptian government is not interested in a comprehensive count of cases, given that the official figures only reflect government-administered PCR tests which are largely reserved for severe cases in government hospitals. Private PCR tests and other diagnostic methods are not included in the official count."   Economic factors play another crucial role: the International Monetary Fund had raised the forecast for Egypt's 2021 growth from 2% to 2.8%, based in part on "official figures that even the government acknowledges to be inaccurate," Kaldas pointed out.   And, said Josua, the economic impact of more COVID deaths on the country's backbone — tourism — cannot be underestimated. "Another missed tourism season simply cannot be afforded," she said.   Fears that countries may 'manipulate' data   Until Karlinsky and Kobak started collecting the data in late 2020, there was no international repository for a pandemic-related excess mortality rate that included more than 100 countries. Previously, a few databases had only compared figures from a handful of high-income countries in Europe.   As with every dataset, several aspects have to be taken into consideration when comparing the figures with previous years. Due to lockdowns, the number of fatal car accidents dropped to an all-time low in countries around the world.   Deaths caused by influenza or other respiratory diseases fell due to social distancing and the fact that many more people were working from home.   The researchers added that the recording time frames differ from country to country, depending on when the pandemic began in each area.   And yet, the bottom line is that far more people have died of COVID-19 than the WHO's official global count.   "I have hope, and a contrasting fear at the same time," Karlinsky told DW. He hopes that countries will take the findings to heart and reaudit their COVID death tolls. Peru has already followed through and updated its death toll, which has more than doubled from 69,000 to 180,000.   "What I am afraid of is that countries that are already sort of authoritarian and try to downplay the extent of the pandemic might start to manipulate these types of data as well," he said.   Karlinsky fears Turkey has already taken steps in that direction. He said Turkey was supposed to release its all-cause mortality monthly data for 2020 by the end of June, but ended up postponing the publication for an unspecified time over unexplained "difficulties."   "I'm in contact with researchers in Turkey. There are some excess mortality estimates from Istanbul and other big cities. And they are probably very, very large," said Karlinsky.   http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/15/a-terrible-tragedy-us-tops-800000-covid-deaths-highest-in-the-world http://coronavirus.jhu.edu/ http://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html Visit the related web page
	Pharmaceutical corporations charge excessive prices for COVID-19 vaccines by Amnesty, Oxfam, UNAIDS, agencies The People’s Vaccine Alliance   Sep. 2021   End Vaccine Apartheid, by Anis Chowdhury and Jomo Kwame Sundaram. (IPS)   Vaccine costs have pushed many developing countries to the end of the COVID-19 vaccination queue, with most low-income ones not even lining up. Worse, less vaccinated poor nations cannot afford fiscal efforts to provide relief or stimulate recovery, let alone achieve Agenda 2030.   Developing countries now account for more than 85% of global pandemic deaths. By early September, The Economist estimated actual COVID-19 deaths worldwide at 15.2 million, rather than the official 4.6 million.   In six of the ten countries with the highest fatality rates, less than a tenth of their populations were fully vaccinated as of 10 August. In the other four, no more than a third were fully vaccinated.   Now, as rich nations buy up more vaccines for third shots, vaccination inequities are becoming starker. Buying up hundreds of millions of doses, they penalise poorer countries already doubly deprived. Rich countries will likely have about 1.2 billion extra doses by the end of 2021.   More than 5.41 billion vaccine shots have been administered worldwide, with 81% in only ten high and upper middle-income countries. Meanwhile, the poorest countries have only received 0.4%.   In January, the World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General (DG) warned, “I need to be blunt: the world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the world’s poorest countries”.   In early July, Pfizer and BioNTech announced plans to get emergency authorisation for booster vaccine doses. Pfizer then met with US officials to press their case, while Moderna applied for approval this month.   Following the Israeli President’s third shot on 30 July, nearly a million boosters have been administered in the US since 12 August despite earlier official hesitation. US President Joe Biden expects to launch a campaign for a further 100 million booster shots on 20 September.   France began administering boosters to people over 65 from September. The UK has announced offering a third dose from late September. Germany, Belgium and other European countries followed suit.   Now, supply will decline further as Pfizer and Moderna sell booster doses. Two new Pfizer-BioNTech facilities have been approved to manufacture boosters in France and Germany.   Meanwhile, Moderna is scaling up booster production in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Almost all the 3.2 billion Pfizer and Moderna doses to be produced this year have already been purchased by the US and Europe.   The WHO DG lambasted this “scandalous inequity” at the World Health Assembly in May. The WHO has repeatedly called for delaying booster provision, arguing that the most vulnerable people worldwide should be vaccinated first.   Pfizer and Moderna have not provided details of their booster prices. An economist has estimated: “Sold at present prices, this would represent roughly a 50% increase in revenue over the longer run”.   Moderna raised its 2021 vaccine sales forecast for its first two doses to US$19.2 billion in May. So, booster sales should add about US$10 billion. Meanwhile, Pfizer raised its own forecast by more than 70% to US$26 billion, with booster sales bringing US$13 billion more.   Rich countries’ practices actually go against most scientific advice. The case for boosters is not scientifically established. Most scientists do not agree that boosters are the best way to deal with new threats. Citing lack of credible data, scientists have opposed boosters in reputable journals, including Nature.   On 6 August, the European Union’s drugs regulator noted not enough evidence to recommend COVID-19 vaccine boosters. A European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control report this month affirmed, “there is no urgent need” for booster shots except for those in frail health.   The WHO noted on 18 August that current evidence does not support the case for booster shots. Scientists described official decisions approving third booster shots as “shocking” and “criminal”. When US authorities approved boosters, two top vaccine officials quit in protest.   Independent research on Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine suggests it provides long-term immunity for years, contrary to the company’s latest claims. Also using mRNA technology, Moderna’s vaccine should have similar longer-term efficacy.   As COVID-19 vaccines are still new, such expectations remain subject to confirmation. As with most vaccines, ‘memory response’ triggers antibody protection when someone vaccinated is infected, even after natural response levels have waned.   Perhaps most worryingly, as big pharmaceutical companies transform their business strategies to generate more profits from boosters, their incentives change. They have less reason to develop vaccines fully immunizing against the COVID-19 virus, or even to ensure that everyone is vaccinated.   Supplying boosters reduces vaccines available to others. Supplies to poorer countries have already been greatly reduced by rich countries securing many times more than what their populations need.   Some have even abused COVAX, purportedly designed for equitable distribution to poorer countries. COVAX aimed to deliver a billion vaccine doses in 2021, but had only delivered 217 million by August, according to UNICEF.   Meanwhile, many rich country governments continue to block the request to the World Trade Organization to temporarily suspend COVID-19 related intellectual property rights. This waiver would enable developing countries to affordably produce tests, vaccines, treatments, equipment and other such needs.   Earlier, Big Pharma leaders rejected as “nonsense” WHO’s C-TAP initiative to share technologies and research knowledge to accelerate affordable production of and access to such technologies.   There is also a practical reason to seek vaccine equity. We are all safer when everyone is vaccinated. New, more vaccine-resistant variants are emerging, endangering everyone.   Rich countries protecting their own citizens will not prevent new mutants from emerging. New infections risk triggering a resurgence, or worse, with new, more dangerous mutations.   The Delta variant, first reported in India in late 2020, surged in March as few there had been vaccinated. Ironically, the Serum Institute of India has the world’s largest vaccine production capacity by far, but largely underutilised for COVID-19 vaccines.   The IMF warns highly infectious variants could derail economic recovery, cutting global output by US$4.5 trillion by 2025. But the Economist Intelligence Unit estimated the world economy could lose US$2.3 trillion in 2021 alone due to delayed vaccinations, with developing nations losing most.   For the WHO DG, “Vaccine inequity is the world’s biggest obstacle to ending this pandemic and recovering from COVID-19….Economically, epidemiologically and morally, it is in all countries’ best interest to use the latest available data to make lifesaving vaccines available to all”.   http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/09/end-vaccine-apartheid/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/09/covid-19-recovery-requires-justice-beyond-rhetoric/ http://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/09/new-report-shows-leading-covid-19-vaccine-pharma-companies-fuelling-unprecedented-human-rights-crisis/ http://www.rescue.org/report/communities-weve-left-behind-ircs-recommendations-inclusive-and-equitable-global-covid-19   Sep. 2021   Spotlight on Sustainable Development Report 2021   Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis have greatly exacerbated national and global inequalities. Blatant examples are the unfair distribution of care work, relying mainly on women and poorly remunerated if at all, and the global disparity in the distribution of vaccines.   So far more than 60 percent of people in high-income countries have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, but less than 2 percent have done so in low-income countries. In view of this dramatic disparity, the "leave no one behind" commitment of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development remains hollow.   The dominant interests of rich countries, and corporate powers continue to dominate political decision-making. Given the urgency of the COVID-19 crisis and the other unresolved global problems, most notably the climate emergency, it is high time for transformative policies at all levels.   This is the key message of the Spotlight on Sustainable Development Report 2021. The report launched by a global coalition of civil society organizations and trade unions.   According to the report, economic justice based on human rights can be achieved, but the trend towards privatizing, outsourcing and systematic dismantling of public services must be reversed. To combat growing inequality and build a socially just, inclusive post-COVID world, everyone must have equitable access to public services, first and foremost to healthcare and education.   To prevent the COVID-19 pandemic being followed by a global debt and austerity pandemic, governments must be enabled to expand their fiscal policy space and properly tax multinational corporations and wealthy individuals, many of whom pay virtually no income tax at all. Fundamental reforms in the global financial architecture, including a debt workout mechanism beyond piecemeal relief measures for debt servicing, are long overdue.   * Access the report (97pp): http://www.2030spotlight.org/sites/default/files/download/Spotlight_Report_2021_FINAL.pdf http://www.2030spotlight.org/en   Aug. 2021   Pharmaceutical corporations charge excessive prices for COVID-19 vaccines   The cost of vaccinating the world against COVID-19 could be at least five times cheaper if pharmaceutical companies weren’t profiteering from their monopolies on COVID-19 vaccines, campaigners from The People’s Vaccine Alliance said today.   New analysis by the Alliance shows that the firms Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are charging governments as much as $41 billion above the estimated cost of production. Colombia, for example, has potentially overpaid by as much as $375 million for its doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, in comparison to the estimated cost price.   Despite a rapid rise in COVID cases and deaths across the developing world, Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna have sold over 90 percent of their vaccines so far to rich countries, charging up to 24 times the potential cost of production.   Last week Pfizer/BioNTech announced it would licence a South African company to fill and package 100 million doses for use in Africa, but this is a drop in the ocean of need. Neither company have agreed to fully transfer vaccine technology and know-how with any capable producers in developing countries, a move that could increase global supply, drive down prices and save millions of lives.   Analysis of production techniques for the leading mRNA type vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna ―which were only developed thanks to public funding to the tune of $8.3 billion― suggest these vaccines could be made for as little as $1.20 a dose. Yet COVAX, the scheme set up to help countries get access to COVID vaccines, has been paying, on average, nearly five times more.   COVAX has also struggled to get enough doses and at the speed required, because of the inadequate supply and the fact that rich nations have pushed their way to the front of the queue by willingly paying excessive prices.   Without pharmaceutical monopolies on vaccines restricting supply and driving up prices, the Alliance says the money spent by COVAX to date could have been enough to fully vaccinate every person in low- and middle-income countries with cost-price vaccines, if there was enough supply. Instead at best COVAX will vaccinate 23 percent by end of 2021.   The Alliance of nearly 70 organisations, including the African Alliance, Oxfam and UNAIDS, says the failure of some rich countries to back the removal of monopolies and to drive down these excessive prices has directly contributed to vaccine scarcity in poorer nations.   Anna Marriott, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, said: “Pharmaceutical companies are holding the world to ransom at a time of unprecedented global crisis. This is perhaps one of the most lethal cases of profiteering in history.   “Precious budgets that could be used for building more health facilities in poorer countries are instead being raided by CEOs and shareholders of these all-powerful corporations.”   Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS said: “Health workers are dying on the frontline all over the world every single day. Uganda alone lost more than fifty health workers in just two weeks. A reminder of the time when millions of people were dying of HIV in developing countries because the medicines that could save them were priced too high.   “I see lives being saved in vaccinated countries, even as the Delta variant spreads, and I want the same for developing countries. It is criminal that the majority of humanity is still facing this cruel disease unprotected because Pharma monopolies and super profits are being put first.”   While some rich countries have started to re-distribute a fraction of their excess doses and have made funding commitments, this charity is not enough to fix the global vaccine supply problems.   The People’s Vaccine Alliance is calling on all governments to insist that the vaccine technology is transferred ―to enable all qualified manufacturers worldwide, especially those in developing countries, to produce these vaccines.   Governments should also urgently approve a waiver of intellectual property rules related to COVID-19 technologies as proposed by South Africa and India.   The waiver, which has been supported by over 100 nations including the US and France has now entered formal negotiations at the World Trade Organisation that met again this week. But the proposal has been repeatedly blocked by Germany, the UK and the European Union.   Maaza Seyoum, from the African Alliance and People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa, said: “Enabling developing country manufacturers to produce vaccines is the fastest and surest way to ramp up supply and dramatically drive down prices. When this was done for HIV treatment, we saw prices drop by up to 99 percent.   “What possible reason then do the governments of the UK, Germany and EU have to ignore the repeated calls from developing countries to break the vaccine monopolies that could drive up production while driving down price?”   Less than one percent of people in low-income countries have received a vaccine, while the profits made by the companies has seen the CEOs of Moderna and BioNTech become billionaires.   Before the pandemic, developing countries paid a median price of $0.80 a dose for all non-COVID vaccines, according to analysis by the World Health Organization (WHO).   While all vaccines are different and the new vaccines may not be directly comparable, even one of the cheapest COVID 19 vaccines on the market, Oxford/AstraZeneca, is nearly four times this price; the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is 13 times; and the most expensive vaccines, such as Pfizer/ BioNTech, Moderna and the Chinese produced Sinopharm, are up to 50 times higher.   It is vital that vaccine manufacturers are forced to justify why their vaccines cost more, but open competition is also critical to bring down prices and increase supply. All vaccines, old and new, only come down in price once there are multiple competitors in the market.   Never in history have governments been buying more doses of vaccines for one disease and the large-scale production should drive down costs, enabling companies to charge lower prices.   Yet the EU reportedly paid even higher prices for its second order from Pfizer/BioNTech. Dramatic price escalation is predicted to continue in the absence of government action and with the possibility of booster shots being required for years to come.   The CEO of Pfizer has suggested potential future prices of as much as $175 per dose ―148 times more than the potential cost of production. And because pharmaceutical companies anticipate charging such high prices for boosters, they will continue to sell doses to rich countries at the expense of protecting lives globally.   In a briefing note, published today, The People’s Vaccine Alliance highlighted examples of how much both developing and wealthier nations have been potentially overpaying:   Pfizer/ BioNTech are charging their lowest reported price of $6.75 to the African Union but this is still nearly 6 times more than the estimated potential production cost of this vaccine. One dose of the vaccine costs the same as Uganda spends per citizen on health in a whole year.   The highest reported price paid for Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines was paid by Israel at $28 a dose ―nearly 24 times the potential production cost.   The EU may have overpaid for their 1.96 billion Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines by as much as €31 billion.   Moderna has charged countries between 4 and 13 times the potential cost price of the vaccine and reportedly offered South Africa a price between $30-42 a dose ―nearly 15 times higher than the potential production cost.   Colombia, which has been badly affected by COVID, has been paying double the price paid by the US for Modernavaccines. For Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech combined, the country has potentially overpaid by as much as $375 million.   Senegal, a lower-income nation, said it paid around $4 million for 200,000 doses for Sinopharm vaccines, which equates to around $20 a dose.   The UK alone has potentially paid £1.8 billion more than the cost of production for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines ―enough money to pay every worker in its National Health Service (NHS) a bonus of more than £1000.   Maaza Seyoum said: “As long as the pharmaceutical corporations retain their monopolies on the life-saving technology, they will always prioritise contracts where they can make the most excessive profits, leaving developing countries out in the cold.   “With government budgets in crisis the world over, and COVID cases rising in many developing countries, it’s time to stop subsidising corporate fat cats. It’s time to put people before profits.”   http://reliefweb.int/report/world/great-vaccine-robbery-pharmaceutical-corporations-charge-excessive-prices-covid-19 http://www.ipsnews.net/2021/09/end-vaccine-apartheid/ http://msfaccess.org/opposing-countries-must-stop-filibustering-negotiations-trips-waiver-wto http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/16/world-billions-covid-vaccine-doses-africa-unprotected http://www.opendemocracy.net/en/covid-19-is-a-bigger-threat-than-war-so-why-isnt-it-funded-the-same/ http://en.emergency.it/press-releases/two-thirds-of-epidemiologists-warn-mutations-could-render-current-covid-vaccines-ineffective-in-a-year-or-less/ http://peoplesvaccine.org/ Visit the related web page
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