Available in prepress in medRxiv prior to peer-reviewed publication, the study estimates the number of “excess deaths,” which occurred from February to September 2020 above what would be expected in a general year. attributed to COVID-19, there were 36 deaths, meaning that 26% of all excess deaths were not directly attributed to COVID.
The study team, which included Penn demographers Samuel Preston and Irma Elo, discovered more of these additional deaths in counties with a higher source of income inequality, more non-Hispanic black residents, fewer homeowners, and higher population density, indicating a similar trend to socioeconomic disadvantage. . and structural racism.
“Excessive deaths can provide a physically more powerful measure of the effects on overall pandemic mortality compared to direct COUNTs of COVID deaths,” said study leader Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global fitness at the UB. “Excessive deaths come with COVID deaths that have been attributed to other causes, as well as to the indirect consequences of the pandemic in society. “These may come with the concern of going to the hospital for some other condition or a number of disorders caused or aggravated through the economic and intellectual situation. Affects COVID fitness.
Stokes and his colleagues analyzed the National Health Statistics Center’s county-level mortality knowledge for 1,021 counties with 10 or more COVID deaths between February 1 and September 23. how death patterns above the upper range were based on demographic and structural factors.
Researchers used the knowledge of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from 2013 to 2018 to estimate the number of deaths each county would have had to suffer in this era without the COVID pandemic (because mortality rates are replaced from year to year).
Overall, more than 1,000 counties experienced 249,167 more deaths than expected due to ancient trends. Of these, 26%, or 65,481 death certificates, did not directly assign COVID as a cause of death, while the remaining 183,686 did so. In other words, the number of deaths directly attributed to COVID should be increased by 36% to estimate the total number of deaths for which COVID is responsible.
“Counties with the highest levels of COVID-19 mortality also had unusually high mortality rates in 2020 due to other reasons of death,” said Preston, study director and sociology professor at Penn. “This result suggests that the epidemic is guilty of many more deaths than COVID-19 alone. “
While peak counties recorded more deaths than would have been expected in a general year, some saw fewer deaths. Researchers analyzed the dating between the highest deaths and the demographic and structural differences in the US census data. And they located the communities that are already known to have been the maxims. COVID-19 lost even more lives because of the pandemic than official figures show.