Mortality from COVID-19 in 12 countries and 6 states of the United States

Patrick Brown; Prabhat Jha

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has already caused over 115,000 deaths, with global deaths doubling every week. 1-3 Mortality is less biased than case reporting, which is affected by testing policies. However, the daily reporting of COVID-19 deaths is already known to undercount actual deaths, varying over time and place. [4] [5] [6] Reliable estimates of total COVID-19 mortality, the date of peak deaths, and of the duration of excess mortality are crucial to aid responses to the current and potential future pandemics. We have developed the Global COVID-19 Assessment of Mortality (GCAM), a statistical model to project COVID-19 mortality trends to October 1 2020 in 12 countries or regions that constitute >90% of the global COVID-19 deaths reported as of April 12 th . We report also on six US states that account for 70% of the American totals to date (Supplementary Appendix). 1 We quantify the COVID-19 mortality trajectory ranges in each setting. A semi-automated website (www.cghr.org/covid) provides daily updates. GCAM is open, transparent, and uses a reasonably simple method that employs publicly reported mortality data to make plausible projections. The method is designed to improve as more mortality data become available over longer time periods.