A study carried out by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) of the University of Washington, United States (USA) calculates that during the two years of the pandemic in Nicaragua there was an excess mortality of 33,400 deaths attributable to the covid-19.
This figure is 149.9 times higher than the 223 admitted to the time of the study and in turn places Nicaragua as the second country, of the 191 nations and territories analyzed, with the highest underreporting of deaths. The calculation is even higher than that made by the data unit of the British media outlet The Economist, in which they estimated between 10,000 and 30,000 deaths attributable to SAR-CoV-2 in 2020 and 2021.
As described by the authors of the excess mortality analysis, which was published on March 11 in the journal The Lancet, the calculation is based on the number of expected deaths minus the historical record for the 11 years before the pandemic.
They also used six models to estimate expected mortality and “to assess the robustness of the model predicting excess mortality, we performed out-of-sample predictive validity tests, which indicated a small error rate of 0.85%.”
In Nicaragua, studies on excess mortality have served to bring the population closer to knowing the real impact of the pandemic in the face of the lack of information and the little credibility of the figures from the Ministry of Health (Minsa), who report the unlikely death of one weekly from October 2020.
The last calculation of excess mortality made at the national level was carried out by CONFIDENTIAL, based on four causes of deaths related to covid-19: heart attacks, diabetes, pneumonia and hypertension and it was estimated that during the first 21 months of the pandemic there were more than 14,800 attributable deaths, but it was classified by these other causes. This figure rises to 20,264 if eleven other “comorbidities” that also multiplied in both years of the pandemic are included, according to the Minsa Health Map.
They estimate more than 184,000 deaths from covid-19 in Central America
According to the assessment of the specialists, in Central America there were four times more deaths attributable to the pandemic than those officially admitted. And the country with the highest underreporting is Nicaragua.
The calculation of excess mortality estimates that in Honduras there would have been some 55,400 deaths attributable to covid-19 during 2020 and 2021, this figure is the highest in Central America, but it is barely 5.3 times higher than those officially reported.
In Guatemala – which has officially reported the highest number of deaths from covid in the region – it is estimated that there were 51,100 deaths, which is 3.11 times more than the 16,400 admitted. Meanwhile, in El Salvador there would have been 7.04 times more deaths than the 3,820 recognized by the authorities of that country.
The three countries in the region with the lowest underreporting are Belize, Panama and Costa Rica. The first two are estimated to have been between 1.3 and 1.6 times more deaths than those officially recognized, while in the latter nation the number of official deaths from covid-19 is higher than those calculated using the excess mortality methodology.
The countries with the highest underreporting: Tanzania and Nicaragua
The study highlights that the countries with the highest number of excess deaths are India with 4.7 million, the US with 1.13 million, Russia with 1.07 million, Mexico with 798,000, Brazil with 792,000, Indonesia with 736,000 and Pakistan. with 664,000. Among these countries, the highest excess mortality rate per 100,000 was Russia with 374.6 and Mexico with 325.
Meanwhile, the countries that report the greatest underreporting between reported deaths and those estimated due to excess mortality are: Tanzania, which reports 737, but there is an excess mortality of 132,000, Nicaragua with 223, but with an estimate of 33,400, and the Central African Republic which admits 101 deaths and has an excess of 14,100. In these three countries the difference between admitted and reported deaths is greater than 130.
Even in America, the countries that report high underreporting, but not compared to Nicaragua, are Haiti and Venezuela. In the first of these it is estimated that there were 36 times more deaths than admitted and in the second 30 times more.
