UK deaths in 2020: how do they compare with previous years?

Abstract

John Appleby turns to historical records for a long view of deaths in 2020

Historically High Excess Mortality During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Switzerland, Sweden, and Spain

“…The concept of excess mortality has frequently been used to assess the overall effect of historical pandemics, including comparisons across countries for specific pandemics ( 9 , 43–46 ) and historical comparisons of different pandemics within individual countries ( 47 , 48 ). Recently, 2 studies compared excess mortality in 2020 versus 1918 for New York City ( 49 ) and the United Kingdom ( 50 ), and a third study that was similar to ours used weekly data and focused exclusively on Sweden ( 39 ). Our findings are consistent with those of these earlier studies.…”

Learning from the pandemic: mortality trends and seasonality of deaths in Australia in 2020

“…There were increased deaths in 2020 associated with the COVID-19 pandemic in many countries, including Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, Portugal, Sweden, Russia, Brazil, Peru, Israel, Japan, the UK, the USA and Europe as a whole. 1 , 2 Much of the excess mortality was directly attributed to COVID-19, 3 with a further portion attributed to undiagnosed COVID-19. 4 , 5 For non-COVID disease-specific deaths, both increases and decreases were observed.…”

Covid-19: Vaccine woes highlight vital role of traditional public health

“…This is unlikely soon to change, with the pandemic still growing exponentially 1. This year has already seen over 50% more deaths worldwide than the whole of 2020,2 and, while lockdown and vaccines have cut deaths and illness in the UK, the government’s advisers warn that plans for easing restrictions risk a serious summer resurgence 3…”