Demographics of COVID-19 deaths

A platform for open access to international data and metadata on COVID-19 deaths

OBJECTIVE. Since the start of the pandemic, many countries have been publishing daily estimates of COVID-19 deaths. This project aims to collect data from daily national reports and national databases and to publish a freely accessible and properly documented international database on COVID-19 mortality. The aim is to provide the international scientific community and the public with the tools needed to rigorously assess the accuracy of official COVID-19 death counts in order to estimate and compare the dynamics of the pandemic worldwide.

METHOD. The database includes the cumulative number of COVID-19 deaths (1) stratified by sex, age group and place of death, (2) by date of publication and/or date of occurrence of deaths, and (3) delivered with contextual information describing data coverage, quality and sources. In addition, the platform provides information on 5 key questions concerning the potential and limitations of COVID-19 death data for comparison and analysis of pandemic spread and dynamics. This bilingual French-English site offers regularly updated data, metadata and associated documentation (e.g. national reports and methodological documents) for 21 countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United States of America.

The database is available here: https://dc-covid.site.ined.fr/fr/

TEAM. Magali Barbieri**, Florian Bonnet*, Carlo Giovanni Camarda*, Emmanuelle Cambois*, Arianna Caporali*, Étienne Couppié*, Jenny Garcia*, François Herrmann¨, Iris Hourani*, France Meslé*, Olga Penina***, Svitlana Poniakina*, Jean-Marie Robine**** ; Catalina Torres^

* Ined (Institut national d'études démographiques - https://www.ined.fr/)

**Ined/University of California, Berkeley

***Department of Social Medicine and Management, Nicolae Testemitanu State University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 194b Stefan cel Mare si Sfant Blvd, Chisinau, MD-2004, Republic of Moldova

****Inserm/EPHE and Ined

¨ Hopitaux Universitaires de Genève

^ Eco-anthropologie (EA), Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, CNRS, Université de Paris, Musée de l'Homme 17 place du Trocadéro, 75016, Paris, France