IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/socarx/hy9zn.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Importance of Cause-of-Death Certification for the COVID-19 Burden Assessment: the Case of Central Europe

Author

Listed:
  • Fihel, Agnieszka
  • Janick, Anna
  • Buschner, Andrea
  • Ustinavičienė, Rūta
  • Trakienė, Aurelija

Abstract

Background: In Central Europe, the increase in mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic exceeded the number of deaths registered due to coronavirus disease. Miscertification of COVID-19 has been suggested as one of the possible explanations. Analysis of all mentions from death certificates allows us to identify cases where COVID-19 was reported as a contributing rather than the underlying cause of death (UCoD). Methods: Analysis of 187,000 death certificates with a COVID-19 mention from Austria, Bavaria, Czechia, Lithuania and Poland, 2020–2021. Cause of Death Association Indicators (CDAIs) and Contributing CDAIs were calculated to identify and measure the strength of associations between COVID-19, reported as UCoD or not, and all other medical mentions. Results: Death certificates reporting COVID-19 included on average more medical information than other death certificates. In 171,600 deaths with COVID-19 as the UCoD, ten groups of comorbidities and ten types of complications revealed significant and strong association with COVID-19. Further 15,700 deaths were certified with COVID-19 only as a contributing condition, of which almost 20% were assigned to typical coronavirus complications, such as cerebral infarction, Acute Myocardial Infarction, renal failure. In Austria, Bavaria, Czechia and Lithuania the reported scale of COVID-19 mortality would have been 18-27% higher had COVID-19 been coded as the UCoD in all the cases. Conclusions: Complete death certificate information allows us to assess the scale of COVID-19 miscertification and the burden of COVID-19. Deaths registered with a coronavirus comorbidity were equivalent to the total estimated excess mortality in Austria and Czech Republic, and a large proportion of in Lithuania and Bavaria.

Suggested Citation

  • Fihel, Agnieszka & Janick, Anna & Buschner, Andrea & Ustinavičienė, Rūta & Trakienė, Aurelija, 2024. "The Importance of Cause-of-Death Certification for the COVID-19 Burden Assessment: the Case of Central Europe," SocArXiv hy9zn, Center for Open Science.
  • Handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:hy9zn
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/hy9zn
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/65c65628435c450d4bda745a/
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/hy9zn?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Adam, 2022. "The pandemic’s true death toll: millions more than official counts," Nature, Nature, vol. 601(7893), pages 312-315, January.
    2. Ugo Fedeli & Claudio Barbiellini Amidei & Alessandro Marcon & Veronica Casotto & Francesco Grippo & Enrico Grande & Thomas Gaisl & Stefano Barco, 2022. "Mortality Related to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease during the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Analysis of Multiple Causes of Death through Different Epidemic Waves in Veneto, Italy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(19), pages 1-9, October.
    3. Agnieszka Fihel & Magdalena Muszyńska-Spielauer, 2021. "Using multiple cause of death information to eliminate garbage codes," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 45(11), pages 345-360.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fetzer, T. & Rauh, C., 2022. "Pandemic pressures and public health care: evidence from England," Janeway Institute Working Papers 2204, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    2. Flavia Beccia & Andrea Di Pilla & Francesco Andrea Causio & Bruno Federico & Maria Lucia Specchia & Carlo Favaretti & Stefania Boccia & Gianfranco Damiani, 2022. "Narrative Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic’s First Two Years in Italy," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(23), pages 1-18, November.
    3. Laliotis, Ioannis & Stavropoulou, Charitini & Ceely, Greg & Brett, Georgia & Rushton, Rachel, 2022. "Excess deaths in England and Wales during the first year of COVID-19," GLO Discussion Paper Series 1117, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    4. Doran, Áine & Colvin, Christopher L. & McLaughlin, Eoin, 2024. "What can we learn from historical pandemics? A systematic review of the literature," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 342(C).
    5. Anna Sagan & Marina Karanikolos & Małgorzata Gałązka-Sobotka & Martin McKee & Monika Rozkrut & Iwona Kowalska-Bobko, 2022. "The Devil Is in the Data: Can Regional Variation in Amenable Mortality Help to Understand Changes in Health System Performance in Poland?," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(7), pages 1-11, March.
    6. Lukas Freund & Hanbaek Lee & Pontus Rendahl, 2023. "The Risk-Premium Channel of Uncertainty: Implications for Unemployment and Inflation," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 51, pages 117-137, December.
    7. Andy Dobson & Cristiano Ricci & Raouf Boucekkine & Giorgio Fabbri & Ted Loch-Temzelides & Mercedes Pascual, 2023. "Balancing economic and epidemiological interventions in the early stages of pathogen emergence," Post-Print hal-04150117, HAL.
    8. Claudio Barbiellini Amidei & Ugo Fedeli & Nicola Gennaro & Laura Cestari & Elena Schievano & Manuel Zorzi & Paolo Girardi & Veronica Casotto, 2023. "Estimating Overall and Cause-Specific Excess Mortality during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Methodological Approaches Compared," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(11), pages 1-13, May.
    9. Galdikiene, Laura & Jaraite, Jurate & Kajackaite, Agne, 2022. "Trust and vaccination intentions: Evidence from Lithuania during the COVID-19 pandemic," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 17(11), pages 1-1.
    10. Fetzer, Thiemo & Rauh, Christopher & Schreiner, Clara, 2024. "The hidden toll of the pandemic: Excess mortality in non-COVID-19 hospital patients," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    11. Patrick Heuveline, 2022. "Global and National Declines in Life Expectancy: An End‐of‐2021 Assessment," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 48(1), pages 31-50, March.
    12. 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).
    13. Raouf Boucekkine & Shankha Chakraborty & Aditya Goenka & Lin Liu, 2024. "A Brief Tour of Economic Epidemiology Modelling," LIDAM Discussion Papers IRES 2024002, Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES).

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:socarx:hy9zn. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://arabixiv.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.