What lessons can we learn from the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of mortality rates, vaccination, or the economy? The Pasteur Institute brought together researchers from 13 European countries to study the health, social and economic consequences of the Sars-Cov-2 pandemic, in a study published Monday, December 9 in the journal BMC Global and Public Health. Objective: to take stock of the measures taken during the pandemic and establish the lessons that could be learned in the event of a new global health crisis, explains the Pasteur Institute in a press release.
In summary, the researchers concluded that “the countries which took measures early, when hospitals were not yet under pressure, are those which had the lowest excess mortality, and also those which were the most resilient economically”. To arrive at such conclusions, scientists studied excess mortality rates over a period from January 2020 to June 2022 in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway , Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For the first time, they applied a method to circumvent the effects of age (Covid-19 being more fatal in older people). This makes it possible to produce more relevant comparisons between these countries, where the proportion of people aged 80 and over could vary from 3.4% in Ireland to 7.5% in Italy.
The researchers thus concluded that between January 27, 2020 and July 3, 2022, Italy experienced the highest excess mortality rate, with 2.7 excess deaths per 1,000 inhabitants. And this, despite the fact that it was the first country in Europe to confine its population, from March 9, 2020, because hospital admission rates for Covid-19 were already very high. The average for the 13 countries studied was between 0.5 and 1 excess death per 1,000 inhabitants in Norway, Denmark, Ireland and Sweden. All other countries (including Germany, Switzerland and France) experienced intermediate levels of excess mortality, between 1 and 2.
The scientists assessed that the earlier the containment measures were taken, when the hospitals were not yet full, the lower the excess mortality. “We had an intuition about it, but we document it here with objective and robust data”explains Arnaud Fontanet, co-author of the study and member of the Covid-19 Scientific Council at the time, to the Parisian.
He cites in particular the example of Denmark, which took its first restrictive measures when its hospitals only received 10 Sars-Cov-2 patients, and displays very low excess mortality rates. Conversely, the United Kingdom is the country studied which took the latest measures and the one which displayed the highest excess mortality rate at the start of the pandemic (between January and July 2020).
Furthermore, the authors of the study analyzed the consequences of vaccination on excess mortality. In this area, France and Italy stand out negatively, with a low vaccination rate among those over 80, recording “the highest excess mortality between March and June 2021”analysis Arnaud Fontanet at the Monde. And this, while “excess mortality has remained stable in most countries” studied, say the researchers.
The latter also studied the consequences of containment measures on the economy of these 13 countries. They conclude that the later their implementation, the greater the GDP losses in 2020, “which suggests that early implementation of the measures had a lesser impact on the economy than postponing their implementation”. In view of these results, scientists call on leaders not to “not delay the implementation of containment measures” for pandemics that may occur in the future.
