We are more than three years into the COVID pandemic, and both the virus and the measures taken to control its spread have affected people’s lives across the globe.

But how can we fully quantify these effects?

While we have estimates of how many people have died from COVID globally (which currently run at just under 7 million), its broader effects — including mental health deterioration due to, for example, the anxiety of being infected or the isolation of lockdowns — have received less research attention.

In a new study, we’ve attempted to quantify how the COVID pandemic has affected global health using an international survey of the general public.