A comparison of excess deaths by UK country and region during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

Neil A Hopper; Annie Campbell; Cath Roberts; Julie Ramsay; Jos IJpelaar; Myer Glickman; Vahé Nafilyan; Nazrul Islam

doi:10.1093/eurpub/ckad144

A comparison of excess deaths by UK country and region during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic

Eur J Public Health. 2024 Apr 3;34(2):411-414. doi: 10.1093/eurpub/ckad144.

Authors

Neil A Hopper¹, Annie Campbell², Cath Roberts², Julie Ramsay³, Jos IJpelaar⁴, Myer Glickman⁵, Vahé Nafilyan¹, Nazrul Islam^{1

6}

Affiliations

¹ Data Analysis of Social Care and Health, Office for National Statistics, Newport, UK.
² Health, Social Services and Population Statistics, Welsh Government, Cardiff, UK.
³ Demographic Statistics, National Records Scotland, Edinburgh, UK.
⁴ Administrative Research Unit, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, Belfast, UK.
⁵ Epidemiology and Global Health Analysis, Office for National Statistics, Newport, UK.
⁶ Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK.

Abstract

We compare the impact of the first two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic on risk of age-standardized mortality by sex, UK country, and English region. Each wave is defined as lasting 26 weeks and are consecutive beginning in 2020 week 11. The expected rate is estimated from 2015 to 2019 mean and the projected mortality trend from the same period are used to estimate excess mortality. By both measures, excess mortality was highest and lowest in regions of England, London and the South-West, respectively. Excess mortality was consistently higher for males than females.

MeSH terms

COVID-19*
England / epidemiology
Female
Humans
Male
Mortality
Pandemics