Biden Covid Team Reacts to Study Showing Deaths Higher Than Reported: ‘More Reason to Continue to Get Vaccinated’

The Biden administration’s coronavirus response team reacted on Friday to a new study that found the coronavirus death toll in the United States has been vastly undercounted.

Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher asked the team about the study, which estimated that the United States’ true coronavirus death toll is at more than 900,000 — far more than what has been reported.

The study, conducted by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), reported that the United States death toll was undercounted by some 300,000 deaths while the worldwide death toll is nearly 7 million — more than twice the reported number of 3.24 million.

The toll calculated by the study examined excess deaths during the pandemic, though it only factored in deaths “caused directly by the SARS-CoV-2 virus,” and “not deaths caused by the pandemic’s disruption to health care systems and communities.”

“I know the CDC tracks excess death figures, and I’ve been wondering if there has been any discussion of or plan to incorporate those figures into the official death toll?” Christopher asked, prompting a response from CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky.

Walensky explained that the CDC is collecting data on excess deaths that occurred during the pandemic due to restricted access to care, among other factors.

“We will look at this carefully and then we will work within the CDC to make decisions as to count them as excess or to count them as Covid specific,” she said.

“Regardless, I think we need to understand that the death toll of this disease has been attributable directly from Covid as well as the collateral damage, I would say, of what has happened from Covid-19 and that, in my mind, is just more and more reason to continue to get vaccinated.”

Watch above, via C-SPAN.