The Effect of COVID-19 Pandemic on Overall and Cause-Specific Mortality in Pavia, Northern Italy: Updated Estimates for the Year 2021

Abstract

Excess mortality estimates are considered relevant indicators of direct and indirect pandemic effects on the population. Scant data have been published on cause-specific excess mortality. Using individual-level administrative data covering the Pavia province of Italian northern Lombardy region, we provided all-cause and cause-specific raw (RMR) and age-standardized (ASMR) mortality rates in 2021 and 2015–2019, the rate ratio, and 95% confidence intervals, overall and by sex. We obtained the excess deaths in 2021 as the difference between the number of observed and expected deaths from all causes and the two leading causes of death (all neoplasms and circulatory system diseases) by fitting over-dispersed quasi-Poisson regression models, accounting for temporal, seasonal and demographic changes. The total ASMR in 2021 was 972.4/100,000 (6836 certified deaths), with the highest ASMRs for circulatory system diseases (272.6/100,000) and all neoplasms (270.3/100,000), followed by COVID-19 (94.8/100,000 and 662 deaths). Compared to the expected, we estimated a total of 6.2% excess deaths in 2021 (7.2% in males and 5.4% in females), with no excess deaths from all neoplasms and a 6.2% reduction from circulatory system diseases. COVID-19 continued to affect total mortality in 2021, albeit to a lesser extent than in 2020, consistently with national patterns.