ArticleeLife2021
Tracking excess mortality across countries during the COVID-19 pandemic with the World Mortality Dataset.
Article in eLife, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 313 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
313 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Experiences of team collaboration among intensive care nurses during COVID-19: a qualitative systematic review and meta-synthesis.Frontiers in public health · 2026Pooled it
- Autopsy findings in cases of fatal COVID-19 vaccine-induced myocarditis.ESC heart failure · 2025Pooled it
- Excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in low-and lower-middle-income countries: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC public health · 2024Pooled it
- Eco-sustainable organic solvent-free spectrophotometric method for the concurrent determination of a ternary pharmaceutical mixture.BMC chemistry · 2026Article
- Long-term mortality rate changes and inverse patterns for pandemic and post-pandemic excess mortality.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Greece, 2020-January 2023: An Analysis Based on National Digital COVID-19 and Vaccination Registries.Epidemiologia (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Dynamic properties of an SARS-CoV-2 epidemic model via stochastic PINNs.Infectious Disease Modelling · 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
- Institutional quality and pandemic resilience: cross-country evidence on health and economic outcomes during COVID-19.Globalization and health · 2026Article
- Mortality trends and socioeconomic inequalities in sickle cell disease in Colombia, 2012-2023: a population-based study.Orphanet journal of rare diseases · 2026Article
- Global landscape of maternal hemorrhage mortality: a 40-year analysis based on GBD 2021 study.Archives of gynecology and obstetrics · 2026Article
- Using forensic autopsy data to estimate the age-specific infection fatality risk of COVID-19.Epidemiology and infection · 2026Article
- Bridging the gap between public health, academia and policy.BMJ global health · 2026Article
- Cardiometabolic Mortality and Health System Expansion in Kuwait (2010-2022): A National Time-Series Analysis.Journal of clinical medicine · 2026Article
- Poset sensitivity analysis reveals post 2020 changes in human development index components.iScience · 2026Article
- Mortality before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Manhiça district, Southern Mozambique.Population health metrics · 2026Article
- Mortality risk during the COVID-19 pandemic is shaped by human development.BMC global and public health · 2026Article
- Lower Mortality Associated With Preemptive Health System Resource Reallocation During COVID-19: A Longitudinal Study in 85 Countries.Disaster medicine and public health preparedness · 2026Article
- Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mortality Patterns in Bushehr Port of Iran: A Comparative Analysis of the Prepandemic Period (2014-2019) and the Pandemic Era (2020-2023).Influenza and other respiratory viruses · 2026Article
- Global Assessment of COVID-19 Mortality Displacement From 2020 to 2024.JAMA network open · 2026Article
253 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Abstract
Comparing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic between countries or across time is difficult because the reported numbers of cases and deaths can be strongly affected by testing capacity and reporting policy. Excess mortality, defined as the increase in all-cause mortality relative to the expected mortality, is widely considered as a more objective indicator of the COVID-19 death toll. However, there has been no global, frequently updated repository of the all-cause mortality data across countries. To fill this gap, we have collected weekly, monthly, or quarterly all-cause mortality data from 103 countries and territories, openly available as the regularly updated World Mortality Dataset. We used this dataset to compute the excess mortality in each country during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that in several worst-affected countries (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico) the excess mortality was above 50% of the expected annual mortality (Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Mexico) or above 400 excess deaths per 100,000 population (Peru, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Serbia). At the same time, in several other countries (e.g. Australia and New Zealand) mortality during the pandemic was below the usual level, presumably due to social distancing measures decreasing the non-COVID infectious mortality. Furthermore, we found that while many countries have been reporting the COVID-19 deaths very accurately, some countries have been substantially underreporting their COVID-19 deaths (e.g. Nicaragua, Russia, Uzbekistan), by up to two orders of magnitude (Tajikistan). Our results highlight the importance of open and rapid all-cause mortality reporting for pandemic monitoring.
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