Excess mortality occurred worldwide not only at the beginning of the CoV-19 pandemic, but also with the delta and omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2. It is apparently largely related to CoV-19 vaccination rates. From June 2021 to March 2022, Austria performed much better than the USA among comparable countries, but was otherwise at the bottom of the field. That shows a new US study.
Alyssa Bilinski of the Brown School of Public Health in Providence, Rhode Island, USA, and her co-authors used US statistics, WHO, OECD and Our World in Data to provide CoV-19 vaccination coverage rates for the study and analyzed excess mortality after the first wave of the pandemic, from June 27, 2021 to March 26, 2022. “This included the delta variant and the omicron winter period,” say the authors.
USA and OECD member states compared
The study compared data on excess mortality from all causes (i.e. not just CoV-19) for the entire United States, for the ten US states with the highest and for the ten US states with the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rates .
However, this was also compared with 17 OECD member states, each with more than five million inhabitants and a GDP of more than 25,000 US dollars (24,160 euros) per capita and year – from New Zealand, Australia and Canada to most Western European countries (e.g Sweden, Belgium, France, Austria, Germany, Italy etc.).
High excess mortality in the USA striking
The high excess mortality rate in the USA is striking: Across the country, with a vaccination coverage of only 63 percent, there were 145.5 more deaths from all causes per 100,000 inhabitants. In the ten states with the lowest vaccination coverage, the excess mortality rate was 193.3 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. In the US states with the most vaccinations (73 percent), it was 65.1/100,000 inhabitants and was thus in the middle of the states.
New Zealand performed best of the 20 countries or regions compared (17 states outside the US plus the US as a whole and the two ten-state regions each): only 5.1 more deaths from all causes per 100,000 inhabitants (vaccination coverage: 75 Percent). This is well below all other countries.
Sweden comes second with 32.4 additional deaths/100,000 population (70 percent vaccination coverage), followed by Belgium (33.9/100,000; 76 percent vaccination coverage). New Zealand had operated a rigorous quarantine and vaccination policy. On the other hand, Sweden was repeatedly criticized for its liberal approach at the beginning of the CoV-19 pandemic.
Austria in 17th place
With a vaccination coverage of 80 percent, Spain still had an excess mortality of 42.5 cases per 100,000 inhabitants. Austria only ranks 17th among the 20 positions compared: 74 percent vaccination coverage and an excess mortality rate of 72.9 per 100,000 inhabitants.
The difference between the Delta and Omicron variants is drastic. In Austria, the excess mortality from delta was 65.4 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, during the observation period of the omicron wave only 7.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. New Zealand had even registered a lower mortality (minus 7.6/100,000) during the delta wave. There, the pandemic effect only became apparent with the omicron variant (12.7/100,000), the delta wave had apparently been “skipped” by the quarantine of the island state.