Has mortality due to other causes increased during the Covid-19 pandemic? Early evidence from England and Wales

Vandoros, Sotiris

Background: The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed many lives in the UK and globally. The objective of this paper is to study whether the novel coronavirus has also been associated with an increase in deaths in England and Wales for those who have not contracted the disease. Reasons behind this may include avoiding visits to hospitals or GPs, and the effects of the lockdown. Methods: I used weekly ONS data on the number of deaths that did not involve covid-19 over the period 2015-2020. Simply observing trends is not sufficient as spikes in deaths may occasionally occur. I thus followed a differences-in-differences econometric approach to study whether there was a relative increase in non-covid-19 deaths during the pandemic, compared to a control. As an additional approach, an interrupted time series model was also used. Results: Results suggest that there were an additional 531 non-covid-19 deaths in England and Wales since the outbreak of the pandemic, compared to what would have otherwise been expected [diff-in-diff interaction coeff: 531.11; 95%CI: 125.65 to 936.57]. This is confirmed by the interrupted time series model. Discussion: The health effects of covid-19 do not seem to be limited only to patients suffering from the disease, as the number of deaths for those who did not contract covid-19 has also demonstrated an absolute and relative increase. Analysing the cause of death for non-covid-19 deaths will shed light upon the reasons for the increase in such deaths and will help design appropriate policy responses to save lives.