GIS mapping excess mortality in Europe in 2020–2021 on the background of the coronavirus pandemic

Abstract

The first officially recorded case of severe acute respiratory infection caused by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus (2019-nCoV) was reported in the People’s Republic of China in late 2019. Since then, the virus has spread rapidly across the planet. On 30 January 2020. The World Health Organization (WHO) designated the outbreak as an emergency and as early as 30 March 2020 it declared the disease a pandemic, named COVID-19. At the beginning of April 2022 there were more than 500 million cases and 6 million deaths according to this organization. The latter figure however immediately raised questions—among doctors and scientists alike—as it has not yet been possible to develop a uniform approach to its recording around the world. Therefore, in this paper, the choice of the excess mortality indicator is justified in its mapping presentation, whose main advantage is that it can be used to represent both the losses from COVID-19 itself and the consequences of the increased burden on public health systems. The visualization of such data using modern geo-information technology is relevant both at present, against the background of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and in the future, when dealing with its consequences. The main specificity of the territory under study—Europe (including both countries wholly located in this part of the world and parts of it—including Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey, as well as Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Cyprus, geographically located in Asia)—is sufficient similarity of basic demographic indicators of countries with different approaches to pandemic control applied in each of them. This enables us to use maps to highlight whether they have been successful in this area in the most straightforward way. The geo-referenced mapping materials can be used for further, more in-depth analysis and visualization of coronavirus data using cartographic research at the level of individual states and their smaller jurisdictions.