More Than 150,000 Uncounted COVID-19 Deaths Occurred Early In Pandemic, Study Finds [View all]

Source: Huff Post/AP

Mar 18, 2026, 09:05 PM EDT


NEW YORK (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic’s early death toll was much higher than the official U.S. count, according to a new study that spotlights dramatic disparities in the uncounted deaths.

About 840,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported on death certificates in 2020 and 2021. But a group of researchers — using a form of artificial intelligence — estimate that as many as 155,000 unrecognized additional deaths likely occurred in that time outside of hospitals. That would mean about 16% of COVID-19 deaths went uncounted in those years.

The overall findings, published Wednesday by the journal Science Advances, were close to estimates from other studies of pandemic deaths during that time. But the authors of the new study tried to determine exactly which deaths were more likely to be missing from the official tallies.

The answer: The undiagnosed dead were more likely to be Hispanic people and other people of color, who had died in the first few months of the pandemic, and who had been in certain states in the South and Southwest — including Alabama, Oklahoma and South Carolina. Six years after the coronavirus swept through the U.S., barriers remain for many of the same people, said Steven Woolf, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher not involved in the study. “People on the margins continue to die at disproportionate rates because they can’t access care,” he said in an email.

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