Using excess deaths and testing statistics to determine COVID-19 mortalities

Abstract Factors such as varied definitions of mortality, uncertainty in disease prevalence, and biased sampling complicate the quantification fatality during an epidemic. Regardless employed measure, infected population number infection-caused deaths need to be consistently estimated for comparing mortality across regions. We combine historical current data, a statistical testing model, SIR epidemic improve estimation mortality. find that average excess death entire US from January 2020 until February 2021 is 9 $$\%$$ % higher than reported COVID-19 deaths. In some areas, New York City, weekly about eight times previous years. Other countries Peru, Ecuador, Mexico, Spain exhibit significantly their Conversely, we statistically insignificant or even negative at least most places Germany, Denmark, Norway.