Every Body Counts: Measuring Mortality From the COVID-19 Pandemic.

This article discusses the current difficulties of disaster death attribution and describes the strengths and limitations of relying on death counts from death certificates, estimations of indirect deaths, and estimations of excess mortality. Improving the tabulation of direct and indirect deaths on death certificates will require concerted efforts and consensus across medical institutions and public health agencies. In addition, actionable estimates of excess mortality will require timely access to standardized and structured vital registry data, which should be shared directly at the state level to ensure rapid response for local governments. Correct attribution of direct and indirect deaths and estimation of excess mortality are complementary goals that are critical to our understanding of the pandemic and its effect on human life. PMID: 32915654 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Annals of Internal Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Ann Intern Med Source Type: research