The number of people infected by the novel coronavirus infection caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to rise around the world, with the Johns Hopkins University and Medicine's Coronavirus Resource Center and Worldometer reporting more than 15.9 million cases globally as of 25 July 2020.
And as the death toll due to COVID-19 went past the 640,000-mark recently, there have been growing concerns over whether these numbers are in fact accurate, or whether there is more to looking at the total number of people who have perished from this viral infection.
Yet, the study of mortality figures isn't anything new; in fact, it dates back centuries to the plague outbreak of the 17th century in Europe, which was dubbed the Black Death. As many as 70,000 people were reported to have died due to the disease in the city of London alone, and even this data collection was only possible as city officials introduced bills into law that would report every death that occurred in their local region.
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Today, tracking mortality data has become an important tool in the field of public health and epidemiology to assess the burden of a particular disease or factor in a certain population.
Databases maintained by epidemiologists around the world suggest that the true extent of the damage (read deaths) caused by COVID-19 could be far higher than the numbers being presented by government authorities all over the world. This phenomenon, however, is not new and is known in the world of epidemiology as excess mortality.