Five years ago, on January 11, 2024, China announced the first official death from the coronavirus epidemic: a 61-year-old man, whose name has never been revealed, who had visited the Huanan market, in Wuhan, considered the first source of the epidemic.
Since then, Covid-19 has killed 6.9 million people worldwide, according to data collected by the World Health Organization (WHO). Figures which certainly remain far below reality, estimates the global agency, which explains that it bases its estimates on the number of deaths declared by country. These data are therefore dependent on official government communications, the transparency of which varies greatly.
The United States, the most bereaved country
According to the statistical portal Statista, which is based on the latest WHO figures published at the end of 2023, China has reported more than 121,000 deaths since the very start of the epidemic in December 2019, while the United States communicated on a toll ten times higher, with 1,127,000 deaths recorded during the pandemic.
The United States therefore appears to be the country most fatally affected by Covid-19, followed by Brazil with 700,000 deaths, India with 500,000 deaths, Russia with nearly 400,000 deaths and Mexico which reports more than 300,000 deaths.
On the European side, still based on national declarations taken by the WHO, the United Kingdom is the most bereaved country on the continent in terms of absolute number of deaths, with more than 228,000 deaths. Italy was also hit very hard with 191,000 deaths, followed by Germany (175,000) and France (168,000).
Relative to the overall population of each country, if we consider the number of deaths per million inhabitants, Hungary, Bulgaria and Bosnia are the European countries which have paid the heaviest price. On the American continent, Peru is ahead of the United States and Brazil.
-A drastic decline in life expectancy around the world
The deadliest years were, unsurprisingly, those at the start of the pandemic: 2020 and 2021. According to the WHO, at this period, Covid-19 was among the top five causes of death everywhere in the world, with the exception of of the African continent and the Western Pacific region.
The latest edition of WHO’s World Health Statistics, published in 2024, highlighted that in just two years, between 2019 and 2021, coronavirus epidemic waves wiped out nearly a decade of progress in life expectancy .
Life expectancy fell worldwide by 1.8 years to stand at 71.4 years, falling back to its 2012 level. The report shows that the United States and Southeast Asia continued to be hardest hit by this phenomenon, with a drop in life expectancy of around 3 years over this period.
A disease that remains more deadly than the flu
Five years after its appearance, even if Covid has become less dangerous, with the Omicron variant dominating, health authorities are warning that the disease remains more lethal than the flu. For the 2023-2024 winter season, Public Health France studied the causes of death indicated in the notices sent by general practitioners and found that Covid-19 caused three times more deaths than the flu.
Today, serious forms mainly affect older people. In France, vaccination coverage for those over 65 is estimated at 30.2%. In July 2024, the WHO called for people to continue getting vaccinated, explaining that Covid was still killing 1,700 people per week worldwide, or more than 88,000 deaths per year.