Nadmiarowe zgony podczas pandemii COVID-19 w Polsce i ocena skuteczności szczepień
Excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland and the effectiveness of vaccinating the population

Summary/Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic caused millions of deaths worldwide. According to several pieces of research, vaccinations against the illness caused by the SARS-CoV-2 proved to be an effective measure in reducing the infection and death rates. The aim of the study is to measure the scale of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland on the basis of excess mortality rates in NUTS 3 subregions and in age groups, and then to determine the correlation between the regional variation in relative excess mortality during the fourth wave of the pandemic and the vaccination rate of the population. Excess mortality is understood as the number of registered deaths that exceeds the expected level. Our study covers the period from March 2020 to February 2022. We used data from Eurostat, Statistics Poland and the governmental Poland’s Data portal.The analysis of the number of excessive deaths by age groups indicates that almost 90% of them are the deaths of older people (aged 60 or over), while the breakdown by NUTS 3 subregion demonstrates that the correlation of excessive deaths and the vaccination rate of the population is negative and fairly strong. Assuming a simple linear regression, it turns out an additional 1% of vaccinated people in the older age groups would have translated to the fall in deaths during the fourth wave of the pandemic by around 2,000 nationwide. This result indicates that vaccinations against COVID-19 were effective in preventing deaths among older people.

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