The contribution of population age-sex structure to the excess mortality estimates of 2020–2021 in Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden

Abstract

The Nordic countries offer an ideal case study of the COVID-19 pandemic due to their comparability, high data quality, and variable mitigations. We investigated the age- and sex-specific mortality patterns during 2020–2021 for the five Nordic countries and analysed the total age- and sex-adjusted excess deaths, ratios of actual to expected death rates, and age-standardized excess death estimates. We assessed excess deaths using several time periods and sensitivity tests, and 42 sex and age groups. Declining pre-pandemic age-specific death rates reflected improving health demographics. These affect the expected death estimates and should be accounted for in excess mortality models. Denmark had the highest death rates both before and during the pandemic, whereas in 2020 Sweden had the largest mortality increase. The age-standardized mortality of Denmark, Iceland and Norway was lowest in 2020. 2021 was one of the lowest mortality years for all Nordic countries. The total excess deaths in 2020–2021 were dominated by 70−89-year-olds, were not identified in children, and were more pronounced among men than women. Sweden had more excess deaths in 2020 than in 2021, whereas Finland, Norway and Denmark had the opposite. Our study provides new details on Nordic sex- and age-specific mortality during the first two years of the pandemic and shows that several metrics are important to enable a full understanding and comparison of the pandemic mortality.

Keywords

• COVID-19
• Excess deaths
• Nordic countries
• Age-specific death rates
• Health demographics