An analysis of mortality statistics suggests the death count in the United States from COVID-19 is higher than the 1.1 million officially linked to the disease, according to new University of Minnesota research.
A U sociologist teamed up with public health researchers in Boston and Philadelphia to analyze excess deaths — mortality from natural causes that surpasses historical norms. They found a pattern that only makes sense if COVID played a key role. Excess deaths not ascribed to COVID almost always occurred at the beginning of pandemic waves, and then disappeared when those waves reached peak levels of illness, the researchers found.
“If these excess natural cause deaths had nothing to do with COVID, you would probably see them happening throughout this period, irrespective of when the COVID waves are,” said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, the U sociologist and demographer who coauthored the study.
The results were published in a prestigious science journal, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and argue that many of the 162,000 excess deaths assigned to other causes during the first 30 months of the pandemic should actually be tied to COVID. Exactly how many isn’t specified.
The accuracy of COVID death reporting remains divisive, even after the federal COVID public health emergency ended last spring. Donald Trump as president in 2020 had questioned whether doctors were inflating COVID death counts to obtain more federal relief money. Some lawmakers in Minnesota early in the pandemic questioned whether the state’s death toll was inflated by as much as 40%.
The latest findings come amid a decline in COVID activity, following an increase in illnesses driven by holiday gatherings and the fast-spreading JN.1 coronavirus variant that made up 78% of infections at the end of 2023. Testing in wastewater treatment plants is showing the lowest viral levels in Minnesota since Thanksgiving.
The most likely explanation for non-COVID deaths surging right before pandemic waves is that people weren’t worrying about COVID as much or testing for it at those times. So deaths related to the infectious disease were missed, the study concluded. Testing then rapidly increased as the pandemic waves became apparent, which reduced the share of excess deaths attributed to other causes.
Minnesota’s official count was updated Thursday to 15,776 COVID-19 deaths, including 220 deaths in 2024 that were mostly among people 75 and older.