Excess deaths associated with COVID-19 by rurality and demographic factors in the United States.

ABSTRACT:

Purpose

To estimate percent excess deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic by rural-urban residence in the United States and to describe rural-urban disparities by age, sex, and race/ethnicity.

Methods

Using US mortality data, we used overdispersed Poisson regression models to estimate monthly expected death counts by rurality of residence, age group, sex, and race/ethnicity, and compared expected death counts with observed deaths. We then summarized excess deaths over 6 6-month time periods.

Findings

There were 16.9% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 16.8, 17.0) more deaths than expected between March 2020 and February 2023. The percent excess varied by rurality (large central metro: 18.2% [18.1, 18.4], large fringe metro: 15.6% [15.5, 15.8], medium metro: 18.1% [18.0, 18.3

SUBMITTER: Ahrens KA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11164822 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature