Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022

"Introduction

Excess mortality is internationally recognised as an accurate measure for monitoring and comparing health crisis policies across geographic regions. Excess mortality concerns the number of deaths from all causes during a humanitarian emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, above the expected number of deaths under normal circumstances. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, excess mortality thus includes not only deaths from SARS-CoV-2 infection but also deaths related to the indirect effects of the health strategies to address the virus spread and infection...

Insight into the excess death rates in the years following the declaration of the pandemic by WHO is crucial for government leaders and policymakers to evaluate their health crisis policies...

Materials and methods

...Study design: All-cause mortality reports were abstracted for countries of the Western World using the ‘Our World in Data’ database...

Discussion

This study explored the excess all-cause mortality in 47 countries of the Western World from 2020 until 2022. The overall number of excess deaths was 3 098 456. Excess mortality was registered in 87% of countries in 2020, in 89% of countries in 2021 and in 91% of countries in 2022. During 2020, which was marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the onset of mitigation measures, 1 033 122 excess deaths (P-score 11.4%) were to be regretted... During 2021, when not only containment measures but also COVID-19 vaccines were used to tackle virus spread and infection, the highest number of excess deaths was recorded: 1 256 942 excess deaths (P-score 13.8%)... During 2022, when most mitigation measures were negated and COVID-19 vaccines were sustained, preliminary available data count 808 392 excess deaths (P-score 8.8%)...

In conclusion, excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of COVID-19 containment measures and COVID-19 vaccines. This is unprecedented and raises serious concerns."

Figure 1: Cumulative excess mortality in the Western World (n=47 countries).