The true number of people who have died because of the COVID-19 pandemic is nearly three times higher than the official toll, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
It estimates nearly 15 million were killed from the virus and people who couldn't access healthcare due to overwhelmed systems.
But one coronavirus expert believes here in New Zealand, health officials may actually be overcounting coronavirus-related deaths rather than undercounting them like the rest of the world.
Makeshift crematoriums in India, mass graves in Brazil - a pandemic we thought had killed 5.4 million people, the WHO now says is more likely to have taken the lives of 14.9 million.
"This excess estimate represents 9.5 million more deaths," said William Msemburi, WHO technical officer at the department of data and analytics.
What it calls "excess deaths" are the number of extra deaths that happened, compared to what each country would normally expect had there been no pandemic.
It includes those they believe have died of COVID-19 and those who've died from knock-on effects, like patients not getting treatment because of overwhelmed health systems.
"Most of the excess deaths - that's 84 percent - are concentrated on Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas," said Msemburi.
It's a sobering statistic that also highlights poor recording and a lack of testing in some countries.
In the report, Mexico's excess death toll was two times as high as the government claimed, while Egypt's was 12 times higher and Pakistan eight times more.
The global death toll was also higher for men than for women.
The new data estimates India's excess deaths were 4.7 million by the end of 2021 - that's almost a third of the global toll.
That compares to India's officially recorded toll of just 481,000. Its government's labelled the WHO's methodology as "flawed".
But it's been the opposite in New Zealand, according to one epidemiologist. Professor Michael Baker from Otago University says "if anything, we may be overcounting deaths from this infection".
"One of the things that's really remarkable here is actually we don't have excess mortality since the pandemic started."
Over 7000 community cases were recorded on Friday, and 24 deaths.
The worldwide death toll has been labelled a "tragedy" by the WHO - and now it's clear some lives have been left uncounted by COVID-19.
