“The only unbiased comparison you can make between different countries is by looking at all cause mortality . . . There are so many questions about the rise we’ve seen in death that have not got Covid on the death certificate, yet you feel are inevitably linked in some way to this epidemic.”

The additional deaths are most pronounced in city areas with the worst virus outbreaks, and have fully overwhelmed reporting mechanisms in some. That is particularly worrying for a lot of rising economies, the place whole extra mortality is orders of magnitude higher than official coronavirus fatalities.