A new report suggests other countries had more excess deaths than US during the pandemic.
When adjusted for population size, the US slips down the rankings with 140 excess deaths per 100,000 people. But it remains a long way above the global average of 96 per 100,000 - and it's also one of the worst performing among the most developed nations.
Prabhat Jha, an epidemiologist who worked on the WHO report, says: "The US has about a 15% undercount using excess deaths compared to official Covid deaths - that's mostly a result of some of the early problems that occurred with nursing home deaths being missed."WHO: India's Covid-19 toll highest in the worldThe US has recorded the most deaths from coronavirus in the world - over 300,000 more than the next closest country, Brazil.
"We should compare with countries which have similar age structures as we know Covid has a higher fatality rate in the elderly - so we should compare apples to apples," says Bhramar Mukherjee, professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan. When comparing with Spain, UK, and France, as well as neighbouring Canada - developed countries with similarly aged populations to the US - the US has performed worse.
"A lot of the European countries - like the UK, France and Spain - are reasonable to compare, and they've had lower per capita death rates. It's not night and day, but the US is on the upper end of that spectrum," says Professor Lessler.