The Importance of Reporting Lag in Assessing Excess Deaths During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Salemi, Jason L

The American Journal of Public Health recently published an article by Tatar et al. (p. xx) that sought to quantify the excess deaths occurring in Florida during a seven-month period at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (March to September 2020).1 Although the Farrington surveillance algorithm implemented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to generate jurisdiction-specific expected all-cause deaths for each week beginning February 1, 2020 is well suited to detect excess deaths,2 I commend the authors' efforts to implement and validate a more sophisticated approach to estimating expected deaths. The primary aim of this letter is to express several concerns I have regarding the authors' analysis and conclusions and to underscore the importance of reporting lag in interpreting such data. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print June 10, 2021: e1-e2. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306341).