Nadmierna umieralność w Polsce podczas pandemii COVID-19 w 2020 roku
Excess mortality in Poland during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020

Summary/Abstract: The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic began in China in November 2019, and spread to most countries around the world in the early 2020, causing a large increase in deaths. The aim of the study described in this paper is to estimate and analyse the geographical and temporal variations in excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 in Poland and its regions. The study took into consideration variables such as sex, age and the stage of the pandemic in correlation with the reported number of COVID-19 deaths and the reported number of SARS-CoV-2 virus infections. The standard weekly mortality rate in Poland in 2020 was calculated using the method of time series analysis taking into account weekly seasonal fluctuations in the mortality rate throughout the year, indicated with data reported by registry offices and published by Statistics Poland. The obtained results showed that in 2020, there were approximately 71,000 deaths above the standard number in Poland, most of which, i.e. about 91%, were the deaths of people aged 60 and over. Out of them, only less than 30,000 deaths were reported as deaths caused by COVID-19, which was only about 41% of all excess deaths in this period. The number of excess deaths peaked in the 45th week of 2020, which was the time when the largest number of cases of COVID-19 infection were reported, and not when the largest number of deaths from COVID-19 occurred (which was three weeks later). However, it has not been established yet whether the reason for this situation was an imperfect way of determining the causes of deaths at the beginning of the pandemic, or the excessive burden hospitals were subjected to that caused the increase in deaths from other causes.

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