ArticleEuropean journal of epidemiology2021
Using excess deaths and testing statistics to determine COVID-19 mortalities.
Article in European journal of epidemiology, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 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
24 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Productivity Losses due to Health Problems Arising from COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review of Population-Level Studies Worldwide.Applied health economics and health policy · 2025Pooled it
- Potential for Bias in Prevalence Estimates when Not Accounting for Test Sensitivity and Specificity: A Systematic Review of COVID-19 Seroprevalence Studies.International journal of public health · 2025Pooled it
- Deep disadvantage in mortality on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Clustering-based methodology for comparing multi-characteristic epidemiological dynamics with application to COVID-19 epidemiology in Europe.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Aggregating multiple test results to improve medical decision-making.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Evaluating Spatial, Cause-Specific and Seasonal Effects of Excess Mortality Associated with the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Case of Germany, 2020.Journal of epidemiology and global health · 2023Article
- Variation in mortality burden of the COVID-19 pandemic across federal states in Germany.European journal of public health · 2023Article
- COVID-19 in Italy: Is the Mortality Analysis a Way to Estimate How the Epidemic Lasts?Biology · 2023Article
- Excess all-cause mortality in the USA and Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020 and 2021.Scientific reports · 2022Observational
- Does 'Data fudging' explain the autocratic advantage? Evidence from the gap between Official Covid-19 mortality and excess mortality.SSM - population health · 2022Article
- Infodemiological study on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on increased headache incidences at the world level.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Excess mortality associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia: a population-level analysis of all-cause and noncommunicable disease deaths in 2020.BMC public health · 2022Article
- The end of the COVID-19 pandemic.European journal of clinical investigation · 2022Article
- Underestimation in Reporting Excess COVID-19 Death Data in Poland during the First Three Pandemic Waves.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- On the accuracy of short-term COVID-19 fatality forecasts.BMC infectious diseases · 2022Article
- A statistical model of COVID-19 testing in populations: effects of sampling bias andtesting errors.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2022Article
- On some fundamental challenges in monitoring epidemics.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2022Article
- Did COVID-19 Policies Have the Same Effect on COVID-19 Incidence Among Women and Men? Evidence From Spain and Switzerland.International journal of public health · 2022Article
- Estimation of Excess Deaths Associated With the COVID-19 Pandemic in Istanbul, Turkey.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- [Response to the article: Spread of COVID-19 cases in Africa].Revista espanola de anestesiologia y reanimacion · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
- Update of
- Update of
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Factors such as varied definitions of mortality, uncertainty in disease prevalence, and biased sampling complicate the quantification of fatality during an epidemic. Regardless of the employed fatality measure, the infected population and the number of infection-caused deaths need to be consistently estimated for comparing mortality across regions. We combine historical and current mortality data, a statistical testing model, and an SIR epidemic model, to improve estimation of mortality. We find that the average excess death across the entire US from January 2020 until February 2021 is 9[Formula: see text] higher than the number of reported COVID-19 deaths. In some areas, such as New York City, the number of weekly deaths is about eight times higher than in previous years. Other countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and Spain exhibit excess deaths significantly higher than their reported COVID-19 deaths. Conversely, we find statistically insignificant or even negative excess deaths for at least most of 2020 in places such as Germany, Denmark, and Norway.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.