Group and Cause Specific Excess Mortality from COVID-19 in Sweden

Eleonora Mussino , Stockholm University
Sunnee Billingsley, Stockholm University
Matthew Wallace , Stockholm University
Gunnar Andersson , Stockholm University
Sven Drefahl , Stockholm University

The number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths differed across countries for several reasons: e.g. the timing and extent of containment measures and strategy on testing. For these reasons, researchers have argued that research should focus on administrative all-cause mortality for understanding the burden associated with COVID-19. Earlier research comparing all deaths in the first half of 2020 with the mortality conditions in previous years found evidence for substantive excess mortality. However, it is still not entirely clear how excess mortality varies across population subgroups, defined by age, gender, education, country of birth and others. Additionally, a limitation of using excess mortality is the possible underestimation COVID-19 deaths. With the limitations of total excess mortality in mind, cause-specific mortality data will now be essential to gain a better understanding of the burden associated with COVID-19 mortality. We have access from the Swedish population registers to COVID-19 related mortality events in 2020 by causes of death. We can estimate excess mortality both with and without COVID-19 deaths and compare all-cause mortality and cause-specific mortality with same period in 2019. In this way, we estimate the extent of which the increase in total mortality is attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic and quantify the amount of underestimation of COVID-19 mortality for specific subgroups. First results show that many of those who died in 2020 would not have done so without the pandemic. We also find lower mortality among highly educated individuals in working ages, who had the best opportunities to protect themselves from from COVID-19.

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 Presented in Session 14. COVID-19 mortality across groups and subpopulations