A new study estimates that the early U.S. COVID-19 death toll was substantially higher than official counts, suggesting up to 155,000 additional deaths in 2020–2021 likely went unrecognized because they occurred outside hospitals and were often not tested or diagnosed as COVID-19. The finding reports that this would mean roughly 16% of COVID-19 deaths in those years were missing from official tallies, with undercounting disproportionately affecting Hispanic people and other people of color, especially early in the pandemic and in parts of the South and Southwest. Researchers attribute the gaps to health care access, limited early testing, uneven death-investigation systems (including reliance on coroners), and pressures around how causes of death were recorded amid politicization.
Date: March 18, 2026. Source: apnews.com