The Health Foundation: Understanding excess mortality (6 May 2020)

Summary

Charts comparing COVID-19 deaths across countries are appearing daily in our newsfeeds. Done well, these international comparisons can help us to understand how different national strategies and policies have affected the spread and severity of COVID-19 outbreaks. But sometimes what is presented in these neat charts is not quite as straightforward as it seems, and can draw misleading conclusions.

Excess deaths is a better measure than COVID-19 deaths of the pandemic’s total mortality. It measures the additional deaths in a given time period compared to the number usually expected, and does not depend on how COVID-19 deaths are recorded.

This report, written by Holly Krelle, Claudia Barclay and Charles Tallack, summarises some of the ways of comparing countries to help use make sense of data on deaths.