Global consortium representing 27 institutions compared
mortality in the previous five years to deaths between January and
August 2020. They found that some
countries showed excess all-cause mortality, while other nations
had minimal or even decreased excess mortality.
NICOSIA, Cyprus, July 30, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Since the earliest
weeks following the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, it has been a
challenge to understand the impact of the pandemic on mortality.
COVID-19 death counts do not account for limited testing, upended
healthcare systems, and deaths stemming from restriction measures.
In short, countries worldwide are lacking an accurate picture of
the direct and indirect mortality burden from COVID-19.
The University of Nicosia
(UNIC), its Medical School, and research collaborators took note of
this international problem and devised the sort of global-scale
project needed to address it. They launched the COVID-19 Mortality
(C-MOR) Consortium which welcomed countries from around the world
and focused on measuring excess mortality. This type of analysis
would enable the researchers to assess all-cause deaths during the
pandemic along with all-cause deaths during the same period in
previous years. As such, the Consortium could more accurately
measure how the pandemic affected mortality in countries across the
globe.
The consortium's first step was to assemble a globally
representative team. What started with just one university has
since grown to 58 institutions across 6 continents and 52
countries. Consortium partners in 22 of these countries were able
to navigate through shared challenges of collecting and analysing
five years of mortality data from largely primary sources. Their
hard work and collaboration paid off with a truly global dataset
focused on excess mortality from the inception of the pandemic
through to August 2020. This work was
published last week in the International Journal of
Epidemiology by Oxford University
Press (Excess all-cause mortality and COVID-19 related
mortality: a temporal analysis in 22 countries, from January until
August 2020).
"As emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases become more
common, our results provide valuable lessons on the impact
epidemics can have on populations and also offer insight on what
can be done to mitigate this impact", remarked Dr. Christiana Demetriou, the Consortium's principal
investigator.
The study shows that some of the 22 countries had increased
all-cause excess mortality (Brazil, England, France, Italy, Northern
Ireland, Scotland,
Spain, Sweden, the USA, and Wales), some had insignificant excess
mortality (Austria, Cape Verde, Colombia, Cyprus, Estonia, Israel, Norway, Slovenia, and Ukraine), and some even had reduced excess
mortality (Australia, Denmark, and Georgia).
For five of these countries (Cape
Verde, Cyprus, Georgia, Slovenia, and Ukraine) this is the first published analysis
on excess mortality. Furthermore, this is one of the few studies to
examine excess sex-specific mortality. The researchers found that
females drove excess deaths in Ireland, while only males in Israel, Ukraine, and Italy had increased mortality. Another unique
variable assessed in this study was governmental restriction
measures. The authors note that the countries with increased excess
mortality tended to have limited or delayed control measures, and
vice-versa. Additionally, the study describes that patterns of
mortality found in the cases of Australia, Cape
Verde, and Colombia are
likely influenced by the timing of the pandemic in these countries,
with their more southern latitudes.
These results represent one of the largest and most expansive
studies of mortality from the pandemic that predominantly utilized
national and primary sources, as opposed to publicly available
datasets. Researchers with on-the-ground experience collected the
data for each of their respective countries. While the valuable
lessons in this study make their way to policy-makers and
healthcare professionals, the Consortium remains hard at work
aiding in the response to this pandemic and future ones. In this
vein, it is expanding its research questions to include morbidity,
considering phenomena like long-covid, long-term effects of covid
following recovery, along with potential-years-of-life-lost from
COVID-19.
Dr. Demetriou, who is also an Assistant Professor of
Epidemiology and Public Health at UNIC Medical School, noted,
"as we face this politicized pandemic, the consortium is
actively collecting accurate and timely surveillance data. We will
not only continue to monitor excess deaths but will also begin to
study the morbidity burden from COVID-19. These analyses will help
us to better understand and minimize the multi-dimensional health
effects of the virus".
To find out more about C-MOR and how to get involved, please
visit www.unic.ac.cy/coronavirus/mortality/ or email the C-MOR
project coordinator at gabel.j@unic.ac.cy. You can access the full
list of the Consortium partners that contributed to this study
here.
For Press Queries
John C. Mavris
University of Nicosia
t. +357 22 841711 | e. mavris.j@unic.ac.cy
For Scientific/Consortium Queries
John Gabel
University of Nicosia Medical School
t. +1 (803) 200-1813 | e. gabel.j@unic.ac.cy
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