Global study quantifies COVID death underreporting across 134 countries

Overview

Updated 1 hour ago

Russia and Chile have near-identical capacity to register deaths. One reported COVID mortality accurately. The other underreported by 24%. A new study from Hebrew University of Jerusalem examined 134 countries and found 45-55% of governments misreported COVID deaths during 2020-2021, a gap the authors argue comes down to institutional constraints, not counting ability.

The countries studied reported 5.08 million COVID deaths. The researchers estimate actual mortality was 12.47 million, nearly 2.5 times higher. Underreporting dominated: 62 countries understated deaths, 59 reported accurately, and 10 overstated. The study provides comparable country-level data on the extent of government misinformation, marking the first systematic tool of its kind.

Why it matters

Distorted death counts misdirected travel restrictions, vaccine allocation, and aid during the pandemic — the same pattern could repeat in the next crisis.

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Key Indicators

134

Countries and territories studied

Official COVID mortality data compared against independently estimated excess mortality for 2020-2021.

45-55%

Share of governments that misreported COVID deaths

Across the full sample, between 45 and 55 percent of governments misreported mortality figures.

12.47M

Estimated actual COVID deaths, 2020-2021

The study's estimate of true COVID mortality across the 134 countries, versus 5.08 million reported.

5.08M

Officially reported COVID deaths, 2020-2021

What the same countries reported to the public and international bodies during the study period.

62 of 131

Countries that underreported deaths

Of 131 countries with sufficient data, 62 significantly underreported; only 10 overreported.

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People Involved

Hebrew University of Jerusalem research team

Study authors, Journal of Economic Growth (2026)

Study published and publicized September 2026

Organizations Involved

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Research university

Institution behind the study

Israel's oldest research university; the study's lead institution.

World Health Organization

International agency

Potential responder to findings

UN health agency that relied on member-state mortality data during the pandemic.

Timeline

March 2020 September 2026

4 events Latest: Today

Tap a bar to jump to that date

September 2026
Misreporting study publicized
Today Publication

EurekAlert, King's College London, and r/science circulate findings on 134 countries.
Today
March 2022
Lancet publishes global excess mortality analysis
Research

Systematic analysis shows pandemic's full impact far exceeds reported COVID deaths alone.
March 10th, 2022
December 2021
End of the study period
Research

The 24-month window the Hebrew University study examines closes.
December 31st, 2021
March 2020
WHO declares COVID-19 a pandemic
Global health

Countries begin reporting mortality with widely varying case definitions.
March 11th, 2020

Historical Context

2 moments from history that rhyme with this story — and how they unfolded.

2001-2009

Greece's deficit misreporting (2001-2009)

Greece reported budget deficits below the eurozone's 3% ceiling for years. Eurostat later found the figures were systematically understated, with the true deficit reaching 15.4% of GDP in 2009, triggering the eurozone debt crisis.

Then

Greece required a 110 billion euro bailout; bond markets repriced eurozone sovereign risk across the continent.

Now

Eurostat gained independent verification powers over member-state statistics, a direct institutional response to demonstrated manipulation.

Why this matters now

Like Greece's deficit figures, COVID death underreporting crossed borders: a country reporting low deaths was treated as a safe travel partner, distorting international decisions.

1930s-1980s

Soviet Gosplan statistics (1930s-1980s)

Soviet economic planning relied on production statistics reported by factory managers who faced severe penalties for missing targets. Systematic overreporting and underreporting distorted the entire planned economy for decades.

Then

Central planners made decisions on falsified data, leading to chronic shortages and misaligned investment.

Now

When archives opened in the 1990s, economists found that Soviet GDP figures overstated real output by substantial margins for most of the period.

Why this matters now

The COVID study's finding that communist legacy predicts misreporting points to persistent institutional habits of data manipulation that outlived the Soviet system itself.