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

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

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.