Novel coronavirus (COVID-19) is a new strain of coronavirus first identified in Wuhan, China. Clinical presentation may range from mild-to-moderate illness to pneumonia or severe acute respiratory infection. The COVID-19 pandemic has wider impacts on individuals' health, and their use of healthcare services, than those that occur as the direct result of infection. Reasons for this may include: * Individuals being reluctant to use health services because they do not want to burden the NHS or are anxious about the risk of infection. * The health service delaying preventative and non-urgent care such as some screening services and planned surgery. * Other indirect effects of interventions to control COVID-19, such as mental or physical consequences of distancing measures. This dataset provides information on trend data regarding the wider impact of the pandemic on the number of deaths in Scotland, derived from the National Records of Scotland (NRS) weekly deaths registration data. Data show recent trends in deaths (2020), whether COVID or non-COVID related, and historic trends for comparison (five-year average, 2015-2019). The recent trend data are shown by age group and sex, and the national data are also shown by broad area deprivation category (Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation, SIMD). This data is also available on the COVID-19 Wider Impact Dashboard. Additional data sources relating to this topic area are provided in the Links section of the Metadata below. Information on COVID-19, including stay at home advice for people who are self-isolating and their households, can be found on NHS Inform. All publications and supporting material to this topic area can be found in the weekly COVID-19 Statistical Report. The date of the next release can be found on our list of forthcoming publications.

Results data for the thesis on estimating the age-, sex-, cause-specific excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong and South Korea.Thesis abstractBackgroundFew studies used a consistent methodology and adjusted for the risk of influenza-like illness (ILI) in historical mortality trends when estimating and comparing the cause-specific excess mortality (EM) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Previous studies demonstrated that excess mortality was widely reported from CVD and among the elderly. This study aims to estimate and compare the overall, age-, sex-, and cause-specific excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong (HK) and South Korea (SK) with consideration of the impact of ILI.MethodsIn this population-based study, we first fitted a generalized additive model to the monthly mortality data from Jan 2010 to Dec 2019 in HK and SK before the COVID-19 pandemic. Then we applied the fitted model to estimate the EM from Jan 2020 to Dec 2022. The month index was modelled with a natural cubic spline. Akaike information criterion (AIC) was used to select the number of knots for the spline and inclusion of covariates such as monthly mean temperature, absolute humidity, ILI consultation rate, and the proxy for flu activity.FindingsFrom 2020 to 2022, the EM in HK was 239.8 (95% CrI: 184.6 to 293.9) per 100,000 population. Excess mortality from respiratory diseases (RD) (ICD-10 code: J00-J99), including COVID-19 deaths coded as J98.8, was 181.3 (95% CrI: 149.9 to 210.4) per 100,000. Except for RD, the majority of the EM in HK was estimated from cardiovascular diseases (CVD) (22.4% of the overall EM), influenza and pneumonia (16.2%), ischemic heart disease (8.9%), ill-defined causes (8.6%) and senility (6.7%). No statistically significant reduced deaths were estimated among other studied causes.From 2020 to 2022, the EM in SK was 204.7 (95% CrI: 161.6 to 247.2) per 100,000 population. Of note, COVID-19 deaths in SK were not included in deaths from RD but were recorded with the codes for emergency use as U07.1 or U07.2. The majority of the EM was estimated from ill-defined causes (32.0% of the overall EM), senility (16.6%), cerebrovascular disease (6.8%) and cardiovascular diseases (6.1%). Statistically significant reduction in mortality with 95 CrI lower than zero was estimated from vascular, other and unspecified dementia (-26.9% of expected deaths), influenza and pneumonia (-20.7%), mental and behavioural disorders (-18.8%) and respiratory diseases (-7.7%).InterpretationExcluding RD in HK which includes COVID-19 deaths, the majority of the EM in HK and SK was from CVD and senility. Mortality from influenza and pneumonia was estimated to have a statistically significant increase in HK but a decrease in SK probability due to different coding practices. HK had a heavier burden of excess mortality in the elderly age group 70-79 years and 80 years or above, while SK had a heavier burden in the age group of 60-69 years. Both HK and SK have a heavier burden of excess mortality from males than females. Better triage systems for identifying high-risk people of the direct or indirect impact of the epidemic are needed to minimize preventable mortality.

Summary of the direct, indirect, and overall effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States in 2020.