Ireland experienced around 1,100 excess deaths during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, according to a new report from the Society of Actuaries in Ireland.
The analysis revealed that there was broadly no excess mortality in 2020, but that 2021 saw an increase, indicating to the SAI a more significant impact on mortality patterns during the second year of the pandemic.
Excess mortality is defined as the difference between observed deaths and expected deaths.
The SAI notes that research of the pandemic’s impact on mortality has been “contradictory”.
This comes after the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published research earlier this year arguing that Ireland did not experience excess mortality during the “core pandemic years” of 2020-2022, while an analysis by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) indicated 3,533 excess deaths in Ireland over the period 2020-2021.
Another study by the Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) published in the midst of the pandemic, in July 2020, estimated the number of excess deaths at around 1,200 between March-June of that year, the first year of the pandemic.
These discrepancies were attributed by the SAI to the research being based on different data sources, different time periods being covered and the employment of different methods for calculating excess mortality.
The report, The level of excess mortality in Ireland during the Covid-19 pandemic 2020 & 2021, examined the level of excess all-cause mortality experienced in Ireland during the selected pandemic years, which it said offered insights beyond the number of reported Covid-19 fatalities.
Speaking on Morning Ireland, actuary and senior lecturer in the School of Mathematical Sciences at University College Cork, Linda Doyle, said that the research looked at all deaths during the pandemic compared to the three years (2017-2019) before that period.
“So, while we accept that there was additional deaths from Covid-related issues there was lesser deaths for other issues such as car accidents, respiratory flus and on balance, there was broadly no excess deaths in 2020,” she said.
Looking at the period 2020-2021, medical journal The Lancet found in 2022 that Ireland had one of the lowest excess deaths in the world with 1,170 deaths from all causes.
Despite this, Ireland has experienced high levels of excess mortality in the years following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Gript reported last year that Ireland had consistently high levels of excess mortality that year, with 13.6% recorded in June 2023, while previous reports showed that excess deaths in Ireland were recorded at 12.2% in April 2023, and 13.2% in May 2023, well above the EU average at the time.
Similarly, Eurostat noted that in February of this year, among the 12 EU countries that recorded excess deaths, the highest rates were observed in the Netherlands (12.5 %), Ireland (9.4 %), Slovenia (7.9 %), Austria (6.6 %), and Luxembourg (4.7 %).