Abstract
The novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) represented the most extensive health emergency in human history. However, to date, there is still a lot of uncertainty about the exact death toll the pandemic has claimed. In particular, the number of official deaths could be vastly underestimated. Despite this, many conspirationists speculate that COVID-19 is not a dangerous disease. Therefore, in this manuscript, we use joinpoint regression analysis to estimate the impact of COVID-19 in 27 European countries by comparing annual mortality trends from 2000 to 2020. Furthermore, we provide accessible evidence even for a non-expert audience. Siegel (A1) and Holm-Bonferroni (A2) approaches were employed to assess the significance of the results separately. In conclusion, these results estimate that COVID-19 increased the overall mortality in Europe by 10% (A1: P < .001, A2: Adjusted P = .001). In 16 out of 27 countries (59.3%), the excess mortality ranged from 7.4% to 18.5% (A1: P < .003, A2: Adjusted P < .040). Comparison of the excess mortalities’ distribution to the null counterfactual showed that the mortality increase was highly significant across Europe (Adjusted P < .001).
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
This study did not receive any funding
Author Declarations
I confirm all relevant ethical guidelines have been followed, and any necessary IRB and/or ethics committee approvals have been obtained.
Yes
I confirm that all necessary patient/participant consent has been obtained and the appropriate institutional forms have been archived, and that any patient/participant/sample identifiers included were not known to anyone (e.g., hospital staff, patients or participants themselves) outside the research group so cannot be used to identify individuals.
Yes
I understand that all clinical trials and any other prospective interventional studies must be registered with an ICMJE-approved registry, such as ClinicalTrials.gov. I confirm that any such study reported in the manuscript has been registered and the trial registration ID is provided (note: if posting a prospective study registered retrospectively, please provide a statement in the trial ID field explaining why the study was not registered in advance).
Yes
I have followed all appropriate research reporting guidelines and uploaded the relevant EQUATOR Network research reporting checklist(s) and other pertinent material as supplementary files, if applicable.
Yes
Footnotes
I increased the statistical power by employing one-sided tests to search for high outliers instead of adopting simple two-sided tests.
Data Availability
All data produced in the present work are contained in the manuscript
