Almost three times as many people have died as a result of Covid-19 as official data show, according to a new World Health Organization (WHO) report - the most comprehensive look at the true global toll of the pandemic so far.

There were 14.9 million excess deaths associated with Covid-19 by the end of 2021, the UN body said on Thursday.

The official count of deaths directly attributable to Covid-19 and reported to WHO in that period, from January 2020 to the end of December 2021, is slightly...