An official website of the United States government
Abstract In this work, the COVID-19 pandemic burden in Ukraine is investigated retrospectively using the excess mortality measures during 2020–2021. In particular, the epidemic impact on the Ukrainian population is studied via the standardized both all-cause and cause-specific mortality scores before and during the epidemic. The excess mortality counts during the pandemic were predicted based on historic data using parametric and nonparametric modeling and then compared with the actual reported counts to quantify the excess. The corresponding standardized mortalityP-score metrics were also compared with the neighboring countries. In summary, there were three “waves” of excess all-cause mortality in Ukraine in December 2020, April 2021 and November 2021 with excess of 32%, 43% and 83% above the expected mortality. Each new “wave” of the all-cause mortality was higher than the previous one and the mortality “peaks” corresponded in time to three “waves” of lab-confirmed COVID-19 mortality. The lab-confirmed COVID-19 mortality constituted 9% to 24% of the all-cause mortality during those three peak months. Overall, the mortality trends in Ukraine over time were similar to neighboring countries where vaccination coverage was similar to that in Ukraine. For cause-specific mortality, the excess observed was due to pneumonia as well as circulatory system disease categories that peaked at the same times as the all-cause and lab-confirmed COVID-19 mortality, which was expected. The pneumonias as well as circulatory system disease categories constituted the majority of all cases during those peak times. The seasonality in mortality due to the infectious and parasitic disease category became less pronounced during the pandemic. While the reported numbers were always relatively low, alcohol-related mortality also declined during the pandemic.
more »
« less
Excess mortality in Belarus during the COVID-19 pandemic as the case study of a country with limited non-pharmaceutical interventions and limited reporting
Abstract Public health intervention to contain the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic significantly differed by country since the SARS-CoV-2 spread varied regionally in time and in scale. Since vaccinations were not available until the end of 2020 non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) remained the only strategies to mitigate the pandemic spread at that time. Belarus in Europe is one of a few countries with a high Human Development Index where no lockdowns have ever been implemented and only limited NPIs have taken place for a period of time. Therefore, the Belarusian case was evaluated and compared in terms of the mortality burden. Since the COVID-19 mortality was low, the excess overall mortality was studied for Belarus. Since no overall mortality data have been reported past June 2020 the analysis was complemented by the study of Google Trends funeral-related search queries up until August 2021. Depending on the model, the Belarusian mortality for June of 2020 was 29 to 39% higher than otherwise expected with the corresponding estimated excess death was from 2953 to 3690 while the reported COVID-19 mortality for June 2020 was only 157 cases. The Belarusian excess mortality for June 2020 was higher than for all neighboring countries with an excess of 5% for Poland, 5% for Ukraine, 8% for Russia, 11% for Lithuania and 11% for Latvia. The relationship between Google Trends and mortality time series was studied using Granger’s test and the results were statistically significant. The results for Google Trends searches did vary by key phrase with the largest excess of 138% for April 2020 and 148% for September 2020 was observed for a key phrase “coffin”, while the largest excess of 218% for January 2021 was observed for “funeral services”. In summary, there are indications of the excess overall mortality in Belarus, which is larger than the reported COVID-19-related mortality.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10395447
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Scientific Reports
- Volume:
- 12
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2045-2322
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has caused devastating public health, economic, political, and societal crises. We performed a comparison study of COVID-19 outbreaks in states with Republican governors versus states with Democratic governors in the United States between April 2020 and February 2021. This research study shows that 1) states with Democratic governors had tested more people for COVID-19 and have higher testing rates than those with Republican governors; 2) states with Democratic governors had more confirmed cases for COVID-19 from April 12 until the end of July 2020, as well as from early December 2020 to February 22 2021, and had higher test positivity rates from April 12 until late June 2020, and the states with Republican governors had more confirmed cases from August to early December 2020 and had higher test positivity rates since late June 2020; 3) states with Democratic governors had more deaths for COVID-19 and higher mortality rates than those with Republican governors; 4) more people recovered in states with Democratic governors until early July 2020, while the recovery rate of states with Republican governors is similar to that of states with Democratic governors in May 2020 and higher than that of states with Democratic governors in April 2020 and between June 2020 to February 22 2021. We conclude that our data suggest that states with Republican governors controlled COVID-19 better as they had lower mortality rates and similar or higher recovery rates. States with Democratic governors first had higher test positivity rates until late June 2020 but had lower test positivity rates after July 2020. As of February 2021, the pandemic was still spreading as the daily numbers of confirmed cases and deaths were still high, although the test positivity and mortality rates started to stabilize in spring 2021. This study provides a direct description for the status and performance of handling COVID-19 in the states with Republican governors versus states with Democratic governors, and provides insights for future research, policy making, resource distribution, and administration.more » « less
-
Galea, Sandro (Ed.)Abstract Excess mortality has exceeded reported deaths from Covid-19 during the pandemic. This gap may be attributable to deaths that occurred among individuals with undiagnosed Covid-19 infections or indirect consequences of the pandemic response such as interruptions in medical care; distinguishing these possibilities has implications for public health responses. In the present study, we examined patterns of excess mortality over time and by setting (in-hospital or out-of-hospital) and cause of death using death certificate data from California. The estimated number of excess natural-cause deaths from 2020 March 1 to 2021 February 28 (69,182) exceeded the number of Covid-19 diagnosed deaths (53,667) by 29%. Nearly half, 47.4% (32,775), of excess natural-cause deaths occurred out of the hospital, where only 28.6% (9,366) of excess mortality was attributed to Covid-19. Over time, increases or decreases in excess natural non-Covid-19 mortality closely mirrored increases or decreases in Covid-19 mortality. The time series were positively correlated in out-of-hospital settings, particularly at time lags when excess natural-cause deaths preceded reported Covid-19 deaths; for example, when comparing Covid-19 deaths to excess natural-cause deaths in the week prior, the correlation was 0.73. The strong temporal association of reported Covid-19 deaths with excess out-of-hospital deaths from other reported natural-cause causes suggests Covid-19 deaths were undercounted during the first year of the pandemic.more » « less
-
Abstract Disease modelling has had considerable policy impact during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and it is increasingly acknowledged that combining multiple models can improve the reliability of outputs. Here we report insights from ten weeks of collaborative short-term forecasting of COVID-19 in Germany and Poland (12 October–19 December 2020). The study period covers the onset of the second wave in both countries, with tightening non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and subsequently a decay (Poland) or plateau and renewed increase (Germany) in reported cases. Thirteen independent teams provided probabilistic real-time forecasts of COVID-19 cases and deaths. These were reported for lead times of one to four weeks, with evaluation focused on one- and two-week horizons, which are less affected by changing NPIs. Heterogeneity between forecasts was considerable both in terms of point predictions and forecast spread. Ensemble forecasts showed good relative performance, in particular in terms of coverage, but did not clearly dominate single-model predictions. The study was preregistered and will be followed up in future phases of the pandemic.more » « less
-
null (Ed.)Abstract Factors such as varied definitions of mortality, uncertainty in disease prevalence, and biased sampling complicate the quantification of fatality during an epidemic. Regardless of the employed fatality measure, the infected population and the number of infection-caused deaths need to be consistently estimated for comparing mortality across regions. We combine historical and current mortality data, a statistical testing model, and an SIR epidemic model, to improve estimation of mortality. We find that the average excess death across the entire US from January 2020 until February 2021 is 9 $$\%$$ % higher than the number of reported COVID-19 deaths. In some areas, such as New York City, the number of weekly deaths is about eight times higher than in previous years. Other countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, and Spain exhibit excess deaths significantly higher than their reported COVID-19 deaths. Conversely, we find statistically insignificant or even negative excess deaths for at least most of 2020 in places such as Germany, Denmark, and Norway.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
-
Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-09345-z
