ArticleEpidemiology and infection2021
Covid-19, non-Covid-19 and excess mortality rates not comparable across countries.
Article in Epidemiology and infection, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 19 papers.
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Who cites it
19 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trends and demographic inequalities in mortality of the Lithuanian population during the COVID-19 pandemic: who suffered most?Population health metrics · 2025Article
- Excess respiratory, circulatory, neoplasm, and other mortality rates during the Covid-19 pandemic in the EU and their implications.Epidemiology and infection · 2025Article
- Excess Mortality in Türkiye during 2020-2022: Regional and Time-Based Analysis.Balkan medical journal · 2025Article
- Negative excess oral and pharyngeal cancer mortality in Europe during the early pandemic years.Oral diseases · 2025Article
- Excess Death Rates by State During the COVID-19 Pandemic: United States, 2020‒2023.American journal of public health · 2024Article
- A Complex Interplay: Navigating the Crossroads of Tobacco Use, Cardiovascular Disease, and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A WHF Policy Brief.Global heart · 2024Review
- An audit of COVID-19 death reporting in counties Cork and Kerry, Ireland, winter 2021-2022.Irish journal of medical science · 2023Review
- Mortality rates of severe COVID-19-related respiratory failure with and without extracorporeal membrane oxygenation in the Middle Ruhr Region of Germany.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- The disproportionate case-fatality ratio of COVID-19 between countries with the highest vaccination rates and the rest of the world.IJID regions · 2023Article
- Excess mortality during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the City of Frankfurt/Main, Germany, in 2020 and 2021, adjusted for age trends and pandemic phases.GMS hygiene and infection control · 2023Article
- Two complementary approaches to estimate an excess of mortality: The case of Switzerland 2022.PloS one · 2023Article
- Hospital-Level COVID-19 Preparedness and Crisis Management in Czechia.International journal of public health · 2023Article
- Impact of COVID-19 on Hospital Admissions and Healthcare Quality Indicators in Non-COVID Patients: A Retrospective Study of the First COVID-19 Year in a University Hospital in Spain.Journal of clinical medicine · 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
- The impact of COVID-19 Vaccination in Iranian elderly: 7 percent of all-cause deaths reduced by vaccinating 2 percent of population; letter to editor.Gastroenterology and hepatology from bed to bench · 2022Article
- Let Us Not Forget the Victims of COVID-19 Pandemics Who Did Not Die With the Coronavirus.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Global "flu-ization" of COVID-19: A perspective from Vietnam.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Article
- A first analysis of excess mortality in Switzerland in 2020.PloS one · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Evidence that more people in some countries and fewer in others are dying because of the pandemic, than is reflected by reported coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19) mortality rates, is derived from mortality data. Using publicly available databases, deaths attributed to Covid-19 in 2020 and all deaths for the years 2015-2020 were tabulated for 35 countries together with economic, health, demographic and government response stringency index variables. Residual mortality rates (RMR) in 2020 were calculated as excess mortality minus reported mortality rates due to Covid-19 where excess deaths were observed deaths in 2020 minus the average for 2015-2019. Differences in RMR are differences not attributed to reported Covid-19. For about half the countries, RMR's were negative and for half, positive. The absolute rates in some countries were double those in others. In a regression analysis, population density and proportion of female smokers were positively associated with both Covid-19 and excess mortality while the human development index and proportion of male smokers were negatively associated with both. RMR was not associated with any of the investigated variables. The results show that published data on mortality from Covid-19 cannot be directly comparable across countries. This may be due to differences in Covid-19 death reporting and in addition, the unprecedented public health measures implemented to control the pandemic may have produced either increased or reduced excess deaths due to other diseases. Further data on cause-specific mortality is required to determine the extent to which residual mortality represents non-Covid-19 deaths and to explain differences between countries.
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