ArticleNature medicine2020
Magnitude, demographics and dynamics of the effect of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic on all-cause mortality in 21 industrialized countries.
Article in Nature medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 227 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
227 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Estimating excess mortality due to the COVID-19 pandemic: a systematic analysis of COVID-19-related mortality, 2020-21.Lancet (London, England) · 2022Pooled it
- Excess all-cause deaths stratified by sex and age in Peru: a time series analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic.BMJ open · 2022Pooled it
- A Mobile App-based Approach in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention: A Prospective Randomized Study.High blood pressure & cardiovascular prevention : the official journal of the Italian Society of Hypertension · 2024Trial
- Accelerated use of artificial intelligence-associated vocabulary in Japanese surgical journals after 2023.Surgery today · 2026Article
- Long-term mortality rate changes and inverse patterns for pandemic and post-pandemic excess mortality.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- Structural gradients in excess mortality during and after the COVID-19 pandemic: economic development, preparedness, and cross-national differences, 2020-2024.Journal of global health · 2026Article
- Patterns and determinants of COVID-19 mortality in Bangladesh: insights from three health and demographic surveillance systems across diverse socio-environmental settings.Population health metrics · 2026Article
- Mechanistic Understanding of Pandemic Dynamics: A Multiscale Algorithmic Framework.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Article
- Hematologic and coagulation responses to Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccination in the Amhara region, Ethiopia.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Hypertension and other comorbidities associated with increased mortality in hospitalized adult patients with COVID-19 in spain: a descriptive, retrospective, nationwide study.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Unmasking pandemic patterns: decoding the COVID-19's impact on mortality in Italy with Generalized Gamma overdispersion model.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Cause specific mortality risks associated with tropical cyclones in multiple countries and territories: two stage, time series study.BMJ (Clinical research ed.) · 2025Article
- Resurgent COVID-19 Wave in India and South Asia: Is the NB.1.8.1 Variant a Renewed Global Health Concern?Health science reports · 2025Article
- Health Perceptions and Trust in Healthcare After COVID-19: An Exploratory Cross-Sectional Survey from Romania.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2025Article
- Spatial and demographic heterogeneity in excess mortality in the United States, 2020-2023: a multimodel approach.American journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Inequality in mortality risk of older adults between rural and urban areas exposure to temperature variations in China.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Analyzing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Mortality Data Using Weekly Exceedance in Mortality Count and Weekly Change in Mortality Indicator: A Time Series Study.Health science reports · 2025Article
- Mortality trends in Kazakhstan: insights from a million of deaths from 2014 to 2022.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Colorectal Cancer Surgery at a Regional Cold Site Centre During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: A Comparison With Prepandemic Practices.Journal of surgical oncology · 2025Article
167 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
14 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has changed many social, economic, environmental and healthcare determinants of health. We applied an ensemble of 16 Bayesian models to vital statistics data to estimate the all-cause mortality effect of the pandemic for 21 industrialized countries. From mid-February through May 2020, 206,000 (95% credible interval, 178,100-231,000) more people died in these countries than would have had the pandemic not occurred. The number of excess deaths, excess deaths per 100,000 people and relative increase in deaths were similar between men and women in most countries. England and Wales and Spain experienced the largest effect: ~100 excess deaths per 100,000 people, equivalent to a 37% (30-44%) relative increase in England and Wales and 38% (31-45%) in Spain. Bulgaria, New Zealand, Slovakia, Australia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Norway, Denmark and Finland experienced mortality changes that ranged from possible small declines to increases of 5% or less in either sex. The heterogeneous mortality effects of the COVID-19 pandemic reflect differences in how well countries have managed the pandemic and the resilience and preparedness of the health and social care system.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.