During a tense CNN appearance, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. repeated a familiar assertion about the pandemic.
“We had the highest death rate from COVID of any nation on earth,” Kennedy stated. When anchor Dana Bash pushed back, he insisted, “What I said was accurate. We had the highest death rate from COVID.”
The Department of Health and Human Services did not provide documentation to support his claim when asked.
While the vast majority of worldwide COVID-19 fatalities occurred between January 2020 and March 2023—during which the U.S. accumulated the highest absolute count at over 1.1 million deaths, later rising to 1.2 million—total volume does not equate to the highest rate.
When looking at the peak pandemic years from 2020 to 2023, the U.S. did not possess the world’s leading overall mortality rate from the virus. That distinction belonged to Peru.
Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University through March 2023 showed that Peru experienced the most severe per capita impact, recording 665.84 deaths per 100,000 residents.
In contrast, the U.S. per capita death rate sat at 341.11 per 100,000 people—roughly half of Peru’s figure and good for the 14th highest globally. Several nations, including Bulgaria, Hungary, Croatia, and Romania, surpassed the U.S. in per capita fatalities.
Johns Hopkins also evaluated deaths relative to confirmed cases, though this metric can be influenced by a nation’s testing capacity and outbreak scale.
The U.S. did not top this “case-fatality ratio” ranking either.
Peru’s case-fatality rate reached 4.9%, placing it among the highest. The U.S. reported a 1.1% rate, matching Canada and sitting lower than countries such as Mexico (4.5%), Ukraine (2.1%), Brazil (1.9%), and Russia (1.8%).
Experts have linked Peru’s severe death toll to various challenges, including widespread poverty, an informal workforce, scarce protective gear, oxygen shortages, and an overburdened healthcare infrastructure.
A handful of nations registered higher case-fatality rates than Peru—such as Yemen (18.1%), Sudan (7.9%), Syria (5.5%), and Somalia (5%). However, these places reported very few deaths relative to their populations (under 20 per 100,000), pointing to a lack of surveillance testing for milder infections rather than an exceptionally lethal outbreak.
Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiology professor and director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University, noted that excess mortality offers another perspective.
Excess deaths measure overall mortality surpassing normal expectations, which Nuzzo considers a more equitable metric unaffected by variations in a country’s diagnostic and reporting capabilities.
Assessments of excess mortality for 2020 and 2021 revealed that countries like Russia, Mexico, and Brazil experienced higher excess death rates than the United States, a finding reinforced by subsequent analyses.
“The bottom line is that, by any measure, the U.S. didn’t experience the most excess deaths of any country,” Nuzzo stated. “The U.S. did have more excess deaths than other highly prepared countries, which was a great disappointment.”
Had Kennedy limited his comparison to peer wealthy nations, his assertion would have been closer to reality, but claiming the U.S. fared worse than every other nation is inaccurate.
Our ruling
Kennedy asserted that the U.S. “had the highest death rate from COVID of any nation on earth.”
While the United States recorded the highest overall volume of COVID-19 deaths, it does not hold the top spot when fatalities are evaluated per capita.
Data from Johns Hopkins University shows that Peru suffered the highest per capita COVID-19 death rate during the pandemic’s first three years. Furthermore, Peru and numerous other nations recorded higher case-fatality rates than the U.S. Evaluations of excess mortality during the initial two years also indicate that countries like Russia, Mexico, and Brazil outpaced the U.S. in excess death rates.
None of these analytical approaches validate Kennedy’s assertion. Consequently, the statement is rated False.