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Excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic: Early evidence from England and Wales

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  • Vandoros, Sotiris

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed many lives in the UK and globally. The objective of this paper is to study whether the number of deaths not registered as Covid-19-related has increased compared to what would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic. Reasons behind this might include Covid-19 underreporting, avoiding visits to hospitals or GPs, and the effects of the lockdown. I used weekly ONS data on the number of deaths in England and Wales that did not officially involve Covid-19 over the period 2015–2020. Simply observing trends is not sufficient as spikes in deaths may occasionally occur. I thus followed a difference-in-differences econometric approach to study whether there was a relative increase in deaths not registered as Covid-19-related during the pandemic, compared to a control. Results suggest that there were an additional 968 weekly deaths that officially did not involve Covid-19, compared to what would have otherwise been expected. It is possible that some people are dying from Covid-19 without being diagnosed, and/or that there are excess deaths due to other causes as a result of the pandemic. Analysing the cause of death for any excess non-covid-19 deaths will shed light upon the reasons for the increase in such deaths and will help design appropriate policy responses to save lives.

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  • Vandoros, Sotiris, 2020. "Excess mortality during the Covid-19 pandemic: Early evidence from England and Wales," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 258(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:258:y:2020:i:c:s0277953620303208
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113101
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    3. Alacevich, Caterina & Cavalli, Nicolò & Giuntella, Osea & Lagravinese, Raffaele & Moscone, Francesco & Nicodemo, Catia, 2020. "Exploring the Relationship between Care Homes and Excess Deaths in the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Italy," IZA Discussion Papers 13492, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Lili Yan Ing & Juniarto James Losari, 2022. "COVID-19: Impacts of Indonesia's Trade," Working Papers DP-2021-49, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).
    5. Theologos Dergiades & Costas Milas & Elias Mossialos & Theodore Panagiotidis, 2021. "Effectiveness of Government Policies in Response to the COVID-19 Outbreak," Discussion Paper Series 2021_05, Department of Economics, University of Macedonia, revised Feb 2021.
    6. Sobol, Małgorzata & Blachnio, Agata & Przepiórka, Aneta, 2020. "Time of pandemic: Temporal perspectives related to compliance with public health regulations concerning the COVID-19 pandemic," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    7. Simone Ghislandi & Raya Muttarak & Markus Sauerberg & Benedetta Scotti, 2022. "Human costs of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the major epicentres in Italy," Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, vol. 20(1), pages 285-282.
    8. Lorena Barberia & Thomas Plümper & Guy D. Whitten, 2021. "The political science of Covid‐19: An introduction," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(5), pages 2045-2054, September.
    9. Janette Yung & Jiehui Li & Rebecca D. Kehm & James E. Cone & Hilary Parton & Mary Huynh & Mark R. Farfel, 2022. "COVID-19-Specific Mortality among World Trade Center Health Registry Enrollees Who Resided in New York City," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(21), pages 1-13, November.
    10. Aizenman, Joshua & Cukierman, Alex & Jinjarak, Yothin & Nair-Desai, Sameer & Xin, Weining, 2022. "Gaps between official and excess Covid-19 mortality measures: The effects of institutional quality and vaccinations," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    11. Michael Polemis & Thanasis Stengos, 2022. "Life expectancy during the Covid-19 pandemic: A semi-parametric difference-in-differences analysis," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 42(2), pages 360-371.
    12. Shiran Bord & Aviad Tur-Sinai & Fuad Basis, 2022. "High Non-COVID-19 in-Hospital Deaths during the First Lockdown in Israel Compared with the Second and Third Lockdowns," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(20), pages 1-11, October.
    13. Ferro, Simone & Riganti, Andrea, 2024. "The hidden toll of the pandemic on nonrespiratory patients," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    14. Caterina Alacevich & Nicolò Cavalli & Osea Giuntella & Raffaele Lagravinese & Francesco Moscone & Catia Nicodemo, 2021. "The presence of care homes and excess deaths during the COVID‐19 pandemic: Evidence from Italy," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1703-1710, July.
    15. Subhasish Dey & Jessie Davidson, 2021. "The Determinants of Non-COVID-19 Excess Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-country Panel Study," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 9(2), pages 196-226, December.

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