The COVID-19 Pandemic: Effects on Civil Registration of Births and Deaths and on Availability and Utility of Vital Events Data (original) (raw)
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2021
This paper outlines the magnitude of pandemic mortality; it presents the effects of COVID-19 on registration of births, marriages, deaths, and causes of death; it examines the resilience of CRVS systems during this health crisis; it suggests alternative solutions and post-covid scenarios in terms of CRVS systems. The literature review looks at civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems which, in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that current CRVS functioning is unable to meet urgent needs for reliable updated data during times of crisis. Pandemic measures have resulted in interruptions of most daily activities: the shutdown of transit and schools, the enormous strain on health systems, and closure of workplaces, including CRVS offices.Global Affairs Canad
The demography of COVID-19 deaths database, a gateway to well-documented international data
Scientific Data, 2022
National authorities publish COVID-19 death counts, which are extensively re-circulated and compared; but data are generally poorly sourced and documented. Academics and stakeholders need tools to assess data quality and to track data-related discrepancies for comparability over time or across countries. “The Demography of COVID-19 Deaths” database aims at bridging this gap. It provides COVID-19 death counts along with associated documentation, which includes the exact data sources and points out issues of quality and coverage of the data. The database — launched in April 2020 and continuously updated — contains daily cumulative death counts attributable to COVID-19 broken down by sex and age, place and date of occurrence of the death. Data and metadata undergo quality control checks prior to online release. As of mid-December 2021, it covers 21 countries in Europe and beyond. It is open access at a bilingual (English and French) website with content intended for expert users and no...
Every Body Counts: Measuring Mortality From the COVID-19 Pandemic
Annals of Internal Medicine, 2020
, more than 170 000 U.S. residents have died of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); however, the true number of deaths resulting from COVID-19, both directly and indirectly, is likely to be much higher. The proper attribution of deaths to this pandemic has a range of societal, legal, mortuary, and public health consequences. This article discusses the current difficulties of disaster death attribution and describes the strengths and limitations of relying on death counts from death certificates, estimations of indirect deaths, and estimations of excess mortality. Improving the tabulation of direct and indirect deaths on death certificates will require concerted efforts and consensus across medical institutions and public health agencies. In addition, actionable estimates of excess mortality will require timely access to standardized and structured vital registry data, which should be shared directly at the state level to ensure rapid response for local governments. Correct attribution of direct and indirect deaths and estimation of excess mortality are complementary goals that are critical to our understanding of the pandemic and its effect on human life.
Expert Review of Anti-infective Therapy
Introduction: A Pandemic is an epidemic at a global scale. The word 'epidemic' has the potential to lead to chaotic, unreasoned responses to health problems, especially when used by journalists. Nigeria like other poor resource countries is equally affected by the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Standardization and proper documentation of the mortality of the COVID-19 in the poorresource countries will help in managing other disease outbreaks in future. This paper calls for improvement in capturing of these data for better planning in the future. Areas covered: Quality data is very essential for policy makers to appreciate any disease condition. In order to present a comprehensive picture of COVID-19 mortality, the deaths were broadly grouped into two as follows: direct and indirect COVID-19 deaths. Most of the current reported deaths seem to be direct deaths. Expert opinion: We propose that for better estimation and standardization, verbal autopsy could be used to differentiate direct/indirect COVID deaths. At full development, this model could be applied to other diseases, outbreaks, or pandemics. The disease surveillance officers, and other health workers can be trained in this regard as well as scaling up the e-surveillance of the DSNOs.
Interim measures for meeting needs for health sector data: births, deaths, and causes of death
Lancet, 2007
Most developing countries do not have fully eff ective civil registration systems to provide necessary information about population health. Interim approaches-both innovative strategies for collection of data, and methods of assessment or estimation of these data-to fi ll the resulting information gaps have been developed and refi ned over the past four decades. To respond to the needs for data for births, deaths, and causes of death, data collection systems such as population censuses, sample vital registration systems, demographic surveillance sites, and internationally-coordinated sample survey programmes in combination with enhanced methods of assessment and analysis have been successfully implemented to complement civil registration systems. Methods of assessment and analysis of incomplete information or indirect indicators have also been improved, as have approaches to ascertainment of cause of death by verbal autopsy, disease modelling, and other strategies. Our knowledge of demography and descriptive epidemiology of populations in developing countries has been greatly increased by the widespread use of these interim approaches; although gaps remain, particularly for adult mortality. However, these approaches should not be regarded as substitutes for complete civil registration but rather as complements, essential parts of any fully comprehensive health information system. International organisations, national governments, and academia all have responsibilities in ensuring that data continue to be collected and that methods continue to be improved.
Differences in COVID-19 mortality: Implications of imperfect and diverse data collection systems
2021
L’urgence que represente la pandemie de COVID-19 a entraine des differences considerables entre les processus de collecte des donnees des pays, qui s’efforcent tous de produire des informations en temps reel mais qui restent des statistiques de mortalite imparfaites. Pour remedier a ce probleme, nous analysons les decomptes de deces par COVID-19 provenant de la base de donnees « La demographie des deces par COVID-19 » (https://dc-covid.site.ined.fr/fr/) et en examinons les limites. Nous decrivons et illustrons des aspects importants touchant aux donnees et qui limitent la possibilite de mener des comparaisons internationales. Pour aplanir ces difficultes, nous classons les sources en fonction du caractere exhaustif des donnees qu’elles fournissent puis nous analysons et comparons les decomptes de deces pour 16 pays. Enfin, nous insistons sur l’importance de bien comprendre les caracteristiques de la collecte des donnees et formulons des recommandations pour le traitement des statist...
COVID-19 mortality according to civilian records
In this short report, we bring some data-driven analyses of COVID-19 mortality in Brazil. The impact of COVID-19 is evaluated by comparing the 2019 and 2020 civilian death records. There is evidence of a considerable excess of deaths since the pandemic started with respect to the previous year. In some states, it is clear that not all excess of deaths in 2020 is due to COVID-19, but to other respiratory causes that did not present the same prevalence in the previous year. Because of this unusual behavior of respiratory deaths, we may infer the evidence of a huge amount of under-reporting deaths due to the COVID-19. The data also shows that COVID-19 has produced an excess death in all ages besides people above 90 and below 10 years. In addition, when separates by sex, data indicate a larger increase in the deaths among males than females.