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

Background 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. This may be a result of some covid-19 deaths being unreported or spillover effects on other causes of death (or both). Reasons behind this might include covid-19 underreporting, avoiding visits to hospitals or GPs, and the effects of the lockdown. Methods 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 differences-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. As an additional approach, an interrupted time series model was also used. Results Results: suggest that there are an additional 968 weekly deaths that officially did not involve covid-19, compared to what would have otherwise been expected. This increase is also confirmed by the interrupted time series analysis. Discussion The number of deaths not officially involving covid-19 has demonstrated an absolute and relative increase during the pandemic. It is possible that some people are dying from covid-19 without being diagnosed, and 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.