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Keynote 4: How Covid Pandemic Affected Mortality Rates in Nordic Countries and Germany?
Time:
Thursday, 21/Mar/2024:
1:45pm - 2:15pm
Session Chair: Frank Swiaczny
Location:ESA-B
Presentations
Keynote 4: How Covid Pandemic Affected Mortality Rates in Nordic Countries and Germany?
Gissler, Mika
THL Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, Finland
Globally WHO has reported 774 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections and 7 million deaths with uneven distribution of disease burden between the WHO Regions. As for December 2023, the Nordic countries reported 9.4 million cases (34/100 inhabitants), which is less than in Germany (38.4 million, 46/100). According to WHO, there were 51 500 COVID-19 deaths in the Nordic countries (188/100 000) and 175 000 (210/100 000) in Germany in 2020-2023. The Nordic average, however, hides a five-fold difference between Iceland (51/100 000) and Sweden (249/100 000).
Measuring COVID-19 mortality is difficult, since countries have had different practices how to gather information on deaths related to COVID-19. Originally WHO recommended countries to report all deaths within 30 days of confirmed infections (deaths with COVID-19). Increasingly, countries report deaths directly or indirectly caused by COVID-19. International statistics is a mixture of these measurements, which hampers their comparability.
