A new study found that about 16% of people who died from COVID-19 in the first two years of the pandemic weren’t counted in the official US tally, totalling about 155,000. This is on top of the 840,000 officially reported deaths, as many of these died outside of hospitals.

As the Associated Press and Fox LiveNow report, a new study published in the journal Science Advances has found that COVID-19 deaths in the United States were significantly undercounted in the first two years of the pandemic. The study, which used artificial intelligence to analyze mortality data, suggested about 16% of COVID-19 deaths during that period went unrecognized.

This translates to roughly 155,000 additional deaths beyond the 840,000 that were officially recorded in 2020 and 2021. Over the past six years, the report shows, there have been a total of 1.2 million COVID-19 deaths in the US.

The uncounted deaths disproportionately involved Hispanic people and other communities of color, particularly in states like Alabama, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, as the AP reports, as many died at home and were never counted in hospital death tolls.

In some areas, according to the report, elected coroners handle death investigations rather than medical examiners, but they often lack specialized training, which can affect how causes of death are determined.

Political views may have also influenced whether individuals sought testing, the reports suggests, and some coroners reported receiving pressure from families to keep COVID-19 off their loved ones' death certificates.

"Our antiquated death investigation system is one key reason why we fell short of accurate counts, particularly outside of big metropolitan areas," said Andrew Stokes of Boston University, the senior author on the paper.

Steven Woolf, a Virginia Commonwealth University researcher, told LiveNow that barriers remain for the same people now as they did six years ago.

"People on the margins continue to die at disproportionate rates because they can’t access care," he said.

Image: Ergin Yalcin/Getty Images