The short-term mortality fluctuation data series, monitoring mortality shocks across time and space

Dmitri A Jdanov,Domantas Jasilionis,László Németh,Carl Boe,Ainhoa Alustiza Galarza,David A Leon,Vladimir M Shkolnikov,Magali Barbieri

doi:10.1038/s41597-021-01019-1

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed substantial coverage and quality gaps in existing international and national statistical monitoring systems. It is striking that obtaining timely, accurate, and comparable across countries data in order to adequately respond to unexpected epidemiological threats is very challenging. The most robust and reliable approach to quantify the mortality burden due to short-term risk factors is based on estimating weekly excess deaths. This approach is more reliable than monitoring deaths with COVID-19 diagnosis or calculating incidence or fatality rates affected by numerous problems such as testing coverage and comparability of diagnostic approaches. In response to the emerging data challenges, a new data resource on weekly mortality has been established. The Short-term Mortality Fluctuations (STMF, available at www.mortality.org) data series is the first international database providing open-access harmonized, uniform, and fully documented data on weekly all-cause mortality. The STMF online vizualisation tool provides an opportunity to perform a quick assessment of the excess weekly mortality in one or several countries by means of an interactive graphical interface.

Highlights

Background & SummaryEffective public health responses to epidemics have always required timely and reliable monitoring of the situation
In addition to weekly death counts, the STMF provides age-specific death rates
It provides series at the national level though short-term mortality fluctuations may vary within countries. It doesn’t provide data by cause of death. In theory, such statistics might be added to the available data series but would not include the most recent years, because tabulations by causes of death need much more time for processing and they may be published with very long delays

Summary

Introduction

Background & SummaryEffective public health responses to epidemics have always required timely and reliable monitoring of the situation. The STMF collection is a unique data resource aimed to provide reliable and uniform mortality data for scientific investigation. In addition to weekly death counts, the STMF provides age-specific death rates. The data series are regularly updated (currently weekly).

Results

Conclusion