Dear Editor
It is both puzzling and concerning that Tara Moriarty, of the Canadian covid-19 data tracking service, has reported increased death rates in Canadians in the past four years, including increased rates of deaths from diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease.
This phenomenon is not unique to Canada.
Although Carolyn Brown’s news feature correctly points out that rates of death in England and Wales have decreased slightly over the past two years, this disguises the fact that in the United Kingdom, and in many other countries, death rates have been far greater than predicted for each of the past three years (1).
Mostert et al's recent publication (in one of your sister journals) (1) points out in a supplementary file (2) that while there were 43,833 excess deaths in Canada between 2020 and 2022, in the same period there were 182,533 excess deaths in the United Kingdom.
The authors concluded that “excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of covid-19 containment measures and covid-19 vaccines” and that “Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality”
1) Mostert S, Hoogland M, Huibers M, et al. Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022 BMJ Public Health 2024. doi.org/10.1136/bmjph-2023-000282
Rapid Response:
Puzzling “spike” in common causes of death
Dear Editor
It is both puzzling and concerning that Tara Moriarty, of the Canadian covid-19 data tracking service, has reported increased death rates in Canadians in the past four years, including increased rates of deaths from diabetes, kidney disease, and cardiovascular disease.
This phenomenon is not unique to Canada.
Although Carolyn Brown’s news feature correctly points out that rates of death in England and Wales have decreased slightly over the past two years, this disguises the fact that in the United Kingdom, and in many other countries, death rates have been far greater than predicted for each of the past three years (1).
Mostert et al's recent publication (in one of your sister journals) (1) points out in a supplementary file (2) that while there were 43,833 excess deaths in Canada between 2020 and 2022, in the same period there were 182,533 excess deaths in the United Kingdom.
The authors concluded that “excess mortality has remained high in the Western World for three consecutive years, despite the implementation of covid-19 containment measures and covid-19 vaccines” and that “Government leaders and policymakers need to thoroughly investigate underlying causes of persistent excess mortality”
1) Mostert S, Hoogland M, Huibers M, et al. Excess mortality across countries in the Western World since the COVID-19 pandemic: ‘Our World in Data’ estimates of January 2020 to December 2022 BMJ Public Health 2024. doi.org/10.1136/bmjph-2023-000282
2) Supplementary PDF 1 https://bmjpublichealth.bmj.com/content/bmjph/2/1/e000282/DC1/embed/inli...
Competing interests: No competing interests