China's COVID-19 control measures may have prevented more than 50,000 people from dying between 2020 and 2021, according to estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO estimates of excess mortality, released in May, calculated as the difference between the number of deaths that occurred and the number that would be expected in the absence of the pandemic based on data from earlier years, show that the full death toll associated directly or indirectly with the COVID-19 pandemic was approximately 14.9 million.

The mean number for accumulated excess deaths in China was minus 52,063, the lowest among all 194 countries listed in the WHO dataset.

Data editor: Zhao Hong 

Graphics designer: Mukesh Mohanan