Excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic

Analysis of excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic. No effective intervention for COVID-19 was widely adopted during the pandemic—the increase in excess mortality slowed only after Omicron. However 6,102 COVID-19 treatment studies—representing over 17 million hours of research by over 39,000 scientists—show that effective and safe treatments were known early in the pandemic1.

Country-level COVID-19 excess mortality data is from Our World in Data2 as of March 17, 2025. Mean age-adjusted cumulative excess mortality per million population is calculated for the 86 countries with data for the entire period. Mostert et al. show similar results for excess mortality within 47 countries. COVID-19 IFR estimates for all ages 1-100 are from Sorensen et al. Population data is from the United Nations World Population Prospects 20245 which provides demographic data within 5 year age ranges 0-4, 5-9, etc. up to 95-99, and 100+. Age adjustment uses the matching 5-year group average IFR and adjusts the results for all countries to estimate what they would be if they had the same age distribution as the United States of America.

The plots below show sensitivity analyses when not using age adjustment and when using all countries with data at each month (not restricting to countries with data for the entire period).