International Comparability

How do countries count deaths with COVID-19?

As the pandemic progresses, journalists and the public compare COVID-19 deaths between countries.

This article discusses the problems of international comparisons in statistics. I also went on a podcast to talk about COVID-19 death statistics.

Death counts

News organisations claimed the UK has the highest COVID-19 death toll in Europe. This claim appears in Reuters, Daily Mirror, The Guardian, and elsewhere.

The European Center for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC) is a common source. Our World in Data uses ECDC data for their COVID-19 analyses.

It is difficult for these kinds of sites to host all the necessary information. The measure sounds simple: the number of deaths with COVID-19.

What does each country’s figures mean? To answer this question, we must look at health institutes in each country.

United Kingdom

In the UK, the submitted figures come from the Department of Health and Social Care. The statistic is the number of deaths with a positive test for COVID-19. The count is for all places, including care homes and at home. Before 29th April, almost all reported deaths were in hospital.

This is what the UK government’s website says:

From 29 April, figures for deaths include all cases where there is a positive…