Has mortality due to other causes increased during the Covid-19 pandemic? Early evidence from England and Wales

ABSTRACT

BackgroundThe Covid-19 pandemic has claimed many lives in the UK and globally. The objective of this paper is to study whether the number of deaths not registered as covid-19-related has increased compared to what would have been expected in the absence of the pandemic. This may be a result of some covid-19 deaths being unreported or spillover effects on other causes of death (or both). Reasons behind this might include covid-19 underreporting, avoiding visits to hospitals or GPs, and the effects of the lockdown. MethodsI used weekly ONS data on the number of deaths in England and Wales that did not officially involve covid-19 over the period 2015-2020. Simply observing trends is not sufficient as spikes in deaths may occasionally occur. I thus followed a differences-in-differences econometric approach to study whether there was a relative increase in deaths not registered as covid-19-related during the pandemic, compared to a control. As an additional approach, an interrupted time series model was also used. ResultsResults suggest that there are an additional 968 weekly deaths that officially did not involve covid-19, compared to what would have otherwise been expected. This increase is also confirmed by the interrupted time series analysis. DiscussionThe number of deaths not officially involving covid-19 has demonstrated an absolute and relative increase during the pandemic. It is possible that some people are dying from covid-19 without being diagnosed, and that there are excess deaths due to other causes as a result of the pandemic. Analysing the cause of death for any excess non-covid-19 deaths will shed light upon the reasons for the increase in such deaths and will help design appropriate policy responses to save lives.