Some notes on excess mortality

As I prepared for an interview, I wrote notes on excess deaths.

Excess deaths are deaths from all causes above a baseline. That baseline often represents an expected number of deaths.

Different institutions use different baselines:

• Office for National Statistics: Past 5-year average (2015 to 2019).
• Public Health England: statistical models using the past five years of data.
• EuroMOMO: statistical models of ‘normal’ summers and winters.

Excess death calculations differ through choices of periods and baselines.

Where can I find data on excess mortality?

There many institutions collating COVID-19 surveillance deaths. There is no single source for frequent all-cause mortality.

The World Bank calculates annual crude death rate per 1,000 people for countries. The United Nations Statistics Divisions publishes annual death statistics. The latest year in these datasets is 2019.

There are two teams of researchers collating weekly and monthly mortality figures.

• Human Mortality Database: researchers at the University of California and the Max Planck Institute.
• World Mortality Dataset: researchers Ariel Karlinsky and Dmitry Kobak. Currently, this dataset covers 94 countries.