It is a large research team funded by, among others, the Bill and Melina Gates foundation, which has collected data on excess mortality from 74 countries.
- It is a very impressive work that gives a picture of the overall global effect.
It is in line with how we reason in Sweden that excess mortality is the fairest and fastest measure to see how the pandemic affected the death toll, says Joakim Dillner, professor of infection epidemiology at Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.
The excess mortality shows how many died during a certain period compared to the normal.
The researchers wanted to get around the fact that countries report deaths caused by covid-19 in different ways.
In the study, they compared the mortality rates for 2020 and 2021 with a period of eleven years before the pandemic.
In Sweden we have used this measure before, but in many countries we only look at deaths that have been reported to be due to covid-19.
Big differences
By studying the excess mortality, the researchers' conclusion is that the covid-related death rate is as much as three times as high as the deaths reported are due to covid-19.
On average worldwide, the pandemic has caused 120 extra deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
But there are many differences between countries and regions.
Bolivia is the country that had the highest mortality rate during the first two years of the pandemic, with over 700 extra deaths per 100,000.
If you look at larger geographical areas, it is Latin America, Eastern and Central Europe, northern and southern Africa and the Middle East that have had the highest excess mortality.
For Sweden, the figure was 91 extra deaths per 100,000, which places us well below the Western European average of 140.
Countries with the highest mortality in terms of number are India, USA, Russia and Mexico.
A few countries had no excess mortality or lower than normal mortality.
This includes Iceland, Australia, Singapore and Norway.
- What is clear is that only a dozen countries have survived without any total excess mortality.
Many countries that did well in the beginning got worse then, says Joakim Dillner.
Ambitious program
According to him, the figures for Sweden are in line with what previous studies have shown and those included in the Corona Commission's report.
The bottom line is that we had a severe excess mortality during the first months of the pandemic but not after that.
The result of the entire pandemic, we have not had any significant excess mortality.
- Much thanks to our ambitious vaccination program, we have gone from being a deterrent example of excess mortality after the first wave to an overall fairly good result, says Joakim Dillner.
In the study, the researchers also address the ratio between deaths reported due to covid-19 and excess mortality.
It also varies between countries, but Sweden is mentioned as a good example where the quota is close to 1.
"It is important to go further and try to understand which deaths were caused by covid-19 and which came as an indirect consequence of the disease," writes lead author Haidong Wang in a press release.
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"The precautionary principle should have been applied" - Hear the President of the Commission on the government's actions at the beginning of the pandemic.
Photo: Jonas Ekströmer / TT