ArticleBMC public health2025
Excess mortality in COVID-19-negative people with non-communicable disorders during the first pandemic wave.
Article in BMC public health, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- The promise of big data: don't fence me in.World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA) · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEstimating the indirect mortality due to COVID-19 is of the utmost importance to develop adequate public health policy during future outbreaks.
methodsFrom province-wide administrative datasets, we identified British Columbians who tested negative for COVID-19 during the first wave and never tested positive throughout 2020. We obtained a pre-pandemic (2018) cohort matched on age, sex, history of non-communicable disorders (NCDs), multimorbidity, and severity/acuity, and implemented a doubly robust estimation of the effect of the first pandemic wave on mortality.
resultsThe adjusted odds ratio (AOR) of death was 3.2 times higher for a 2020 cohort who tested negative for COVID-19 (n = 123,133), compared to matched pre-pandemic controls. In both cohorts, a majority (72.5%) experienced at least one pre-existing NCD. Stratification by NCD shows an AOR of death ranges between 2-for people with substance use disorders- and 7-for people previously undiagnosed with NCDs (e.g., incident cases that went untreated). The largest subgroup was composed of people with mental disorders (47,413 people), with an AOR of death of 2.5. Though the COVID-19 direct mortality in the general population remained low (1.9 per 10,000), the excess mortality in this COVID-negative cohort was extremely high - 4,085 of the 123,133- which entails a minimum indirect excess mortality death rate of 6.5 per 10,000 in the general population.
conclusionsDuring the first pandemic year, mortality in COVID-negative adults was several times greater than before COVID-19, in people with matched NCD distribution and severity. Our findings suggest that low direct COVID-19 mortality was accompanied by less visible-but much higher- indirect mortality due to undiagnosed and/or untreated NCDs, highlighting the need to focus not only on mitigating the harms of new agents, but also of continuing service delivery for treatable conditions.
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