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Did we undercount Covid deaths by 155,000?

March 19, 2026
March 19, 2026
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Disability in Health Care Reporting Fellow

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If you can't attend, don't fret — keep refreshing that STAT homepage today and you'll catch all of the coverage.

TITANIC, MEET ICEBERG

The precarious state of U.S. science

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Daniel Berman for STAT

A STAT survey of nearly 1,000 federally funded researchers reveals that many academic scientists are reeling after President Trump's return to the White House. Researchers are drastically scaling back the ambition of their work and some labs are shutting down entirely.

The survey found that more than a quarter of respondents have laid off lab members, and more than 2 out of every 5 have cancelled planned research. Two-thirds have counseled students to consider careers outside the ivory tower. Strikingly, despite courts reversing some grant terminations and Congress thwarting plans to slash the NIH budget, just 35% of respondents whose grants were cut or delayed said their government funding had been fully restored by the end of 2025. "This is like the Titanic hitting the iceberg," said one researcher.

The scope of the impact is startling. Here's the main story, from Jonathan Wosen, which digs into the details of the survey's findings and is bolstered by interviews with 30 of those researchers. Jonathan and Anil Oza partnered up for a second story that illuminates the struggles facing three researchers in particular.

COMMUNITY

What we take for granted about vaccines (plus WHO news)

Amid backlash following the Covid-19 pandemic and emboldened by the rise of health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., vaccine critics have focused on the importance of individual autonomy and "medical freedom" when it comes to choosing which shots to get, and when. But as STAT's Helen Branswell writes, the implications for public health affect us all.

Many vaccines deliver indirect health benefits when widely used, both for the people who got them and for society at large. When a vaccine was developed to protect little kids against pneumococcal disease, for example, rates of the disease declined across all age groups, particularly in older adults. Kids vaccinated against chickenpox are much less likely to get shingles later in life. And vaccinating girls against HPV protected boys from some forms of cancer too. Read more from Helen on what benefits get lost in the focus on "me" rather than "we."

Speaking of vaccines, the World Health Organization has updated its recommendations on Covid vaccines. High risk groups like older adults should get two shots a year, six months apart, officials said, while pretty much all other adults and kids should get routine Covid vaccination once a year. Healthy children aged 6 months to 23 months should not get routine vaccination unless the country experiences a significant illness burden in this cohort, WHO said.

DISABILITY

As Trump targets fraud, disability community frets

The Trump administration wants to end health care fraud. But its efforts may come with a steep cost: cutting critical services for people with disabilities.

In January, federal officials threatened to withhold roughly $2 billion in funding for 14 Medicaid services in Minnesota for the next year. They also placed a moratorium on new durable medical equipment suppliers. Now they're informing states like Florida that they will be investigated for fraud.

Advocates worry that broadly targeting state Medicaid funding and other health care services will risk people's lives when more than a quarter of Americans have a disability and the administration's tax bill last year slashed Medicaid funding by $1 trillion over 10 years.

What are disability advocates saying about this recent push from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services? Read more from me here.

RESEARCH

Premature menopause raises heart disease risk

If your menstrual periods end before you reach 40, you might face a sharply higher risk of coronary heart disease, according to a new JAMA Cardiology study. It's unclear why, but the study's findings are particularly worrisome for Black women, who are three times more likely than white women to enter premature menopause.

Researchers have tied premature menopause to short-term heart disease before, but the new research looked at six ongoing studies of more than 10,000 women without coronary heart disease whose health was tracked from 1964 to 2018. Among the 3,522 Black women studied, 15.5% had premature menopause; among the 6,514 white women, 4.8% did.

While the culprit raising the risk of disease is still unknown, scientists have some ideas. Read more from STAT's Elizabeth Cooney to find out what we know and what we don't about premature menopause.

VACCINES

Latest update on hepatitis B trial in Guinea-Bissau

Where do things stand with the controversial clinical trial of the hepatitis B vaccine birth dose that the CDC agreed to fund, the one to be conducted in Guinea-Bissau? That's a question without a clear answer, it appears.

Earlier this week it was reported that the University of Southern Denmark had put the trial, proposed by some of its researchers, on a full hold, with the dean of health sciences saying a WHO research ethics committee had agreed to review the protocol.

But on Wednesday, Kate O'Brien, head of WHO's immunization and vaccinations program, said that while the university had made that request, the global health agency hadn't yet replied. O'Brien said it's the responsibility of funders and the home institutions of researchers to ensure a proposed study's protocol is ethical. — Helen Branswell

ONE BIG NUMBER

Did we undercount Covid deaths by 155,000?

The official U.S. death toll during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic might be much higher than previously thought.

About 840,000 COVID-19 deaths were reported on death certificates in 2020 and 2021. But a group of researchers — using AI — estimate that as many as 155,000 unrecognized additional deaths likely occurred in that time outside of hospitals. That's missing roughly 16% of the relevant deaths.

If we missed this gigantic swath of people, whose deaths, specifically, did we miss? Mostly Hispanic people and other people of color in the South and Southwest. Read more about the findings.

More around STAT
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What we're reading

  • The FDA withdraws 2015 proposal to prohibit minors from tanning beds, Medscape 
  • Can the keto diet really improve mental health? New York Times
  • Clearing tumors in mice, Azalea Therapeutics advances dream of in vivo CAR-T therapy, STAT
  • Is the medical industry sick? Why Maryland doctors burn out, Baltimore Sun
  • Evidence shows ACA's mandated benefits alone don't drive up costs. The debate continues. KFF Health News

Thanks for reading! 
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