Impact of winter holiday and government responses on mortality in Europe during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

ABSTRACT:

Background

This aggregated population study investigated the impact of the seemingly quasi-randomly assigned school winter holiday in weeks 6-10 (February to early March) on excess mortality in 219 European regions (11 countries) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the spring 2020. A secondary aim was to evaluate the impact of government responses to the early inflow of infected cases.

Methods

Data on government responses weeks 8-14 were obtained from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker. Regional data on total all-cause mortality during weeks 14-23 in 2020 were retrieved from Eurostat and national statistical agencies and compared with the average mortality during same period 2015-2019. Variance-weighted least square regression was used with mortality difference as d

SUBMITTER: Bjork J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7928954 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature