US CDC has about 40k deaths for 2024 so far [1] for United States, and 76k for the year 2023 [2]. Maybe the WHO dashboard is left unmaintained, or maybe many countries have stopped reporting Covid deaths to WHO.
> based on sound medical judgment drawn from clinical training and experience, as well as knowledge of current disease states and local trends
> the disease or injury which initiated
the train of morbid events leading directly to death
It goes on to suggest that if Covid was present they strongly recommend including it. And even if you did not diagnose Covid it can be a good assumption to make.
There were upper and lower bound stats that accounted for many discrepancies. The high numbers were "death with covid", which means the covid might not've done it, and the low numbers were "death by covid" where we were (fairly) sure Covid did it due to lack of other factors, but missed things where Covid tipped someone over the edge.
That sounds right. Based on my reading the CDC numbers are basically death with Covid test or symptoms, with the exception of an obvious distinct cause.
Which honestly I can’t think of a better way for mass data collection.
[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#trends_totaldeaths...
[2] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/28235...