Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on total, sex- and age-specific all-cause mortality in 20 countries worldwide during 2020: results from the C-MOR project
Demetriou, C. A., Achilleos, S., Quattrocchi, A. , Gabel, J., Critselis, E., Constantinou, C., Nicolaou, N., Ambrosio, G., Bennett, C. M., Le Meur, N., Critchley, J. A., Mortensen, L. H., Rodriguez-Llanes, J. M., Chong, M., Denissov, G., Klepac, P., Goldsmith, L. 
ORCID: 0000-0002-6934-1925, Costa, A. J. L., Hagen, T. P., Sun, M. C., Huang, Q., Pidmurniak, N., Zucker, I., Cuthbertson, J., Burstrom, B., Barron, M., Erzen, I., Stracci, F., Calmon, W., Martial, C., Verstiuk, O., Kaufman, Z., Tao, W., Kereselidze, M., Chikhladze, N., Polemitis, A. & Charalambous, A. (2022).
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on total, sex- and age-specific all-cause mortality in 20 countries worldwide during 2020: results from the C-MOR project.
International Journal of Epidemiology, 52(3),
pp. 664-676.
doi: 10.1093/ije/dyac170
Abstract
Background
To understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mortality, this study investigates overall, sex- and age-specific excess all-cause mortality in 20 countries, during 2020.
Methods
Total, sex- and age-specific weekly all-cause mortality for 2015–2020 was collected from national vital statistics databases. Excess mortality for 2020 was calculated by comparing weekly 2020 observed mortality against expected mortality, estimated from historical data (2015–2019) accounting for seasonality, long- and short-term trends. Crude and age-standardized rates were analysed for total and sex-specific mortality.
Results
Austria, Brazil, Cyprus, England and Wales, France, Georgia, Israel, Italy, Northern Ireland, Peru, Scotland, Slovenia, Sweden, and the USA displayed substantial excess age-standardized mortality of varying duration during 2020, while Australia, Denmark, Estonia, Mauritius, Norway, and Ukraine did not. In sex-specific analyses, excess mortality was higher in males than females, except for Slovenia (higher in females) and Cyprus (similar in both sexes). Lastly, for most countries substantial excess mortality was only detectable (Austria, Cyprus, Israel, and Slovenia) or was higher (Brazil, England and Wales, France, Georgia, Italy, Northern Ireland, Sweden, Peru and the USA) in the oldest age group investigated. Peru demonstrated substantial excess mortality even in the <45 age group.
Conclusions
This study highlights that excess all-cause mortality during 2020 is context dependent, with specific countries, sex- and age-groups being most affected. As the pandemic continues, tracking excess mortality is important to accurately estimate the true toll of COVID-19, while at the same time investigating the effects of changing contexts, different variants, testing, quarantine, and vaccination strategies.
| Publication Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Additional Information: | VC The Author(s) 2022. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Publisher Keywords: | COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, all-cause mortality, excess mortality, pandemic, global impact, infection control |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform Q Science > QR Microbiology > QR180 Immunology R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine |
| Departments: | School of Health & Psychological Sciences > Nursing |
| SWORD Depositor: |
Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution International Public License 4.0.
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