Study: More Kenyans died from Covid-19 than officially reported

More Kenyans may have died from Covid-19 than what official Health ministry records show, a new study has shown.

The study, published in the journal Lancet, shows that Kenya tops the list of East African countries with excess unreported Covid-19 deaths.

About 181 in every 100,000 Covid-19 deaths in Kenya were unaccounted for, the data shows. While the ministry only reported 5.7 in every 100,000 deaths, the study shows that about 32 per cent of fatalities went with the wind.

The researchers explain that excess mortality linked to the Covid-19 pandemic is the difference between the reported deaths and the number of expected deaths based on the pandemic trends.

The gaps exist because of different reasons, they say.

First, most hospitals failed to list Covid-19 as the cause of death in some of the patients who actually succumbed to the disease.

“Early in the pandemic, before tests were widely available, many deaths due to Covid-19 among older individuals in high-income countries, particularly in long-term care facilities, are unlikely to have been attributed to Covid-19 with evidence of extensive under-reporting in many locations,” the study says.

The researchers also say countries differed on how they listed and defined death from Covid-19.

“Among the global medical community, there is no universal agreement as to when a death of someone infected with SARS-CoV-2 should be reported as a death due to Covid-19.”

Political considerations were also a factor and some countries chose not to provide the true picture of the pandemic.

In Tanzania, for instance, the late President John Magufuli did not share data on Covid-19 cases and deaths.

Even so, Tanzania still had fewer excess deaths that were unaccounted for compared with Kenya, but it closely followed the latter with about 127 in every 100,000 unreported deaths.

Inasmuch as the underreporting might not have been deliberate, said consultant pathologist Dr Ahmed Kalebi, the Health ministry needs to have a robust and effective health reporting system.

“Death is ultimately the most important outcome indicator of how a country and its health system performed, so Kenya performed the worst. The data shows that per capita, Kenya had the highest number of excess deaths in the pandemic,” he said.

The ministry reports Covid-19-related deaths late, saying this is because test results come in after a patient has died.

“It is an indication of an inefficient system for documenting deaths which was made worse by the social restrictions during the pandemic – restrictions that limited the public health and death registry officials from properly documenting deaths as well as limiting reporting of deaths to the authorities for people who died out of hospitals,” Dr Kalebi told the Nation.

In a story published in The Nation last year, a nurse in Kakamega confided in a reporter that morgue attendants in some private hospitals hid Covid-19 deaths data in exchange for money.

Globally, it is estimated that over 18 million people may have died of Covid-19 against the reported six million.

While many lives were lost, the study shows that containment measures reduced death risks from injuries such as in road accidents but also led to an increase in deaths related to chronic and acute conditions because healthcare systems were overstrained.