Peru Revises Covid-19 Death Total to Triple Official Figures
Peru said its Covid-19 death toll is almost three times as high as it had officially counted until now, making it one of the hardest-hit nations during the pandemic relative to its population.
In a report released on Monday, which combined deaths from multiple databases and reclassified fatalities, the government said that 180,764 people died from Covid-19 through May 22, almost triple the official death toll of about 68,000. The new figure would mean that more people have died in Peru relative to its population than in Hungary and the Czech Republic, the countries with the highest official death tolls per person, according to a New York Times database.
The report landed at a precarious moment for Peru’s government, just days before the second round of a closely watched presidential election scheduled for June 6.
Peru has struggled to contain the coronavirus since the pandemic began, and its official death toll before the revised estimate was already the ninth-highest per capita in the world. As early as last June, it was clear that far more deaths were occurring in Peru than would be expected in a normal year, and the gap — a figure known as excess deaths — was much larger than the number of deaths officially attributed to Covid-19, according to New York Times data. That was a warning sign to experts that Covid deaths were being undercounted.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/peru-revises-covid-19-death-total-to-triple-official-figures/ar-AAKzES8