Emerging Infectious Diseases (Mar 2021)

Excess All-Cause Deaths during Coronavirus Disease Pandemic, Japan, January–May 2020

  • Takayuki Kawashima,
  • Shuhei Nomura,
  • Yuta Tanoue,
  • Daisuke Yoneoka,
  • Akifumi Eguchi,
  • Chris Fook Sheng Ng,
  • Kentaro Matsuura,
  • Shoi Shi,
  • Koji Makiyama,
  • Shinya Uryu,
  • Yumi Kawamura,
  • Shinichi Takayanagi,
  • Stuart Gilmour,
  • Hiroaki Miyata,
  • Tomimasa Sunagawa,
  • Takuri Takahashi,
  • Yuuki Tsuchihashi,
  • Yusuke Kobayashi,
  • Yuzo Arima,
  • Kazuhiko Kanou,
  • Motoi Suzuki,
  • Masahiro Hashizume

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3201/eid2703.203925
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 27, no. 3
pp. 789 – 795

Abstract

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To provide insight into the mortality burden of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Japan, we estimated the excess all-cause deaths for each week during the pandemic, January–May 2020, by prefecture and age group. We applied quasi-Poisson regression models to vital statistics data. Excess deaths were expressed as the range of differences between the observed and expected number of all-cause deaths and the 95% upper bound of the 1-sided prediction interval. A total of 208–4,322 all-cause excess deaths at the national level indicated a 0.03%–0.72% excess in the observed number of deaths. Prefecture and age structure consistency between the reported COVID-19 deaths and our estimates was weak, suggesting the need to use cause-specific analyses to distinguish between direct and indirect consequences of COVID-19.

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