Coronavirus pandemic: is Belgium the world's deadliest COVID-19 country or just the most honest?

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For weeks now the nation of 11.5 million has been written off as an unrivalled catastrophe. Some 815 people have died in Belgium for every 1 million residents. Those numbers, though, only tell half the story.

If honesty really is the best policy, Belgium should probably be lauded as an international leader in the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, the kingdom's unorthodox approach has earned it an unwelcome and unfair title: world's deadliest country.

"In nursing homes for example, if we had one or two deaths where tests came back positive - and then in the week after that you had 10 cases in the same premises presenting with the same symptoms - we counted those other 10 deaths as probable cases," Van Gucht says. Britain now includes deaths in care homes and the community in its national toll, but only cases confirmed via a test. Data on so-called "excess mortality" - that is, the number of deaths from all causes above what would normally be expected for this time of year - suggests the true COVID-19 death toll is the United Kingdom is as high as 60,000 compared to the official figure of 38, 376.

 

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