Ireland experienced almost 1,100 excess deaths during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021 with almost all occurring in the latter period, new research by the Society of Actuaries in Ireland suggests.
The organisation says there was “broadly no excess mortality in 2020” in Ireland with the extensive societal restrictions imposed by Government likely a significant factor in limiting excess deaths in the first year of the pandemic.
In 2021 the research suggests, however, just over 1,000 more people died than might have been expected when compared with the three-year period immediately before Covid-19.
Excess mortality is defined as the difference between observed deaths and expected deaths.
The authors of the report acknowledge that the findings of previous research on the subject were based on different assessments of excess death numbers during the period, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggesting Ireland effectively experienced no excess deaths over the period 2020, 2021 and 2022 while the Central Statistics Office (CSO) had argued there had been 3,500 excess death over 2020 and 2021.
“It is important to note,” they say, “that there is not one definitive approach to calculating excess mortality – mainly because, while observed deaths will ultimately be a matter of record [ie, they are objective], the calculation of expected deaths is dependent on the choice of methodology [ie, it relies on professional judgment].”
The Society of Actuaries contend, however, that its methodology provides more accurate figures while the data employed was more complete than at the time the previous reports were compiled.
In total, it concludes there were 52 excess deaths in 2020 and 1,026 in 2021, giving a total figure for those first two calendar years of the pandemic of 1,078.
It says some previous attempts to gauge the number of excess deaths during the period were flawed because they did not take adequate account of the changing age profile of Ireland’s population before and during the pandemic.
It says its approach was based on “Age Standardised Deaths” and involved taking “the actual deaths by age for each year, and reproportioning them to reflect what they would be if the population had the same size and age distribution every year. In this manner, the distorting effect of changes in population is removed.”
In January, when the OECD report suggested Ireland had the fourth lowest excess death figures among member states behind New Zealand, Iceland and Norway, Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly said “Ireland asked a lot of its population during this time and the restrictions that were put in place had a profound impact on us all. These figures point to the success of Ireland’s public health measures, and to the strong uptake of our Covid-19 vaccination programme.”
The World Health Organisation has said there were 14.9 million excess deaths internationally in 2020 and 2021. The organisation says 7.05 million people died due to Covid up until May 19th of this year with 1,867 newly reported deaths in the previous 28 days, 1,300 of them in the United States and eight of them in Ireland.
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