ArticleSSM - population health2022
Excess mortality in Russia and its regions compared to high income countries: An analysis of monthly series of 2020.
Article in SSM - population health, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Excess life-years and productive life-years lost in Poland through the COVID-19 pandemic and post-pandemic years.Archives of public health = Archives belges de sante publique · 2026Article
- Widening East-West inequality in life expectancy in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic: An international comparative study.PloS one · 2026Article
- Risk factors for all-cause mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with the pre-pandemic period in an adult population of Arkhangelsk, Russia.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic: A cause-of-death analysis of life expectancy changes in 24 countries, 2015 to 2022.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Inequalities in regional excess mortality and life expectancy during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- All-cause mortality and Japan's early countermeasures.Health science reports · 2024Article
- Age and sex differences in cause-specific excess mortality and years of life lost associated with COVID-19 infection in the Swedish population.European journal of public health · 2023Observational
- The COVID-19 pandemic's true death toll in Iran after two years: an interrupted time series analysis of weekly all-cause mortality data.BMC public health · 2023Article
- What should be the baseline when calculating excess mortality? New approaches suggest that we have underestimated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and previous winter peaks.SSM - population health · 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
- COVID-19 and excess mortality in Russia: Regional estimates of life expectancy losses in 2020 and excess deaths in 2021.PloS one · 2022Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundRussia has been portrayed in media as having one of the highest death tolls due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the world. However, the precise scale of excess mortality is still unclear. We provide the first estimates of excess mortality in Russia as a whole and its regions in 2020, placing this in an international context.
methodsWe used monthly death rates for Russia and 83 regions plus the equivalent for 36 comparator countries. Expected mortality was derived in two ways using averages in the same months in preceding years and the same averages adjusted for secular trends. Excess death rates were estimated for the whole year and the last 3 quarters. We also estimated the relationships between excess mortality and reported COVID-19 cases and deaths across countries and Russian regions.
resultsEstimating excess deaths rates based on the trend-adjusted average, Russia had the highest excess mortality of any of the 37 countries considered. Using the simple average, Russia had the third highest. Most of the excess deaths were recorded in the 4th quarter of 2020 and the level and trajectory of excess mortality in Russia and most of Eastern European countries differed from that in Western countries. While both the cumulative number of COVID-19 cases and deaths showed positive correlations with excess mortality across countries (r=0.65 and r=0.75, p<0.001), the association across the Russian regions was, surprisingly, negative for cases (r=-0.34, p<0.01) and deaths (r=-0.09, p=0.42). When we replaced reported deaths with final data from death certificates the correlation was positive (r=0.38, p<0.001).
conclusionRussia has one of the largest absolute burden of excess mortality in 2020 but there is a counter-intuitive negative association between excess mortality and cumulative incidence at the regional level. Under-recording of COVID-19 cases seems to be a problem in some regions.
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