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According to the Swedish Public Health Agency, 9,309 Swedes had died with covid-19 up to and including December 31, 2020. Thus, one might think that it is clear what price Sweden had to pay for the pandemic during what has been described as the ‘shitty year’ 2020.
But it is not that simple. In the statistics of the Public Health Agency, which are updated from Tuesday to Friday, all those who had a covid diagnosis and died up to 30 days after diagnosis. In this registry, therefore, the deaths of people with established covid-19, but who have been run over by a bus, can be recorded. But even in cases where a person has died in a hospital or nursing home, it can be difficult to say in which cases the virus has been directly lethal and in which cases the disease has only been a contributing cause. The number of possible sources of error is high.
Therefore, researchers are leaning toward so-called excess mortality to determine how severely a pandemic like this affects a population. That is, how much the mortality rate stands out in a year, compared to an average of previous years. And now Statistics Sweden (SCB) has concluded that 97,164 Swedes died last year. This should be compared to the years 2015-2019, when an average of 90,962 people died each year. In other words, 6,202 more Swedes died in 2020, compared to “normals”.
– A little careless, you can say that they are the ones who would have lived now if the covid had not existed, says Linus Garp, population statistician at Statistics Sweden.
More deaths
He notes that the figure for how many people died last year is still preliminary and will in all likelihood be drawn up by between 300 and 700 people due to registration delays. Only on February 22 will last year’s population statistics be permanently blocked, he says.
Despite this, just over 6,000 are about 30% fewer deaths than those registered until January 31 in the statistics of the Public Health Agency. These roughly 3,000 people consist of people who, statistically speaking, had still died in the past year, but for reasons other than COVID-19.
Last year, 97,164 people died in Sweden, according to Statistics Sweden’s preliminary figure. They are unusually many. To find a year in which almost the same number died, we have to go back to 1993, when 97,008 deaths were recorded.
However, making historical comparisons like these can be very difficult, notes Linus Garp.
– It is very difficult, because the population is constantly changing. Not only the population but also its composition. There are those who think that we should not even compare ourselves to the death toll in the last five years, as the population has increased. That’s true, but since more has changed due to immigration, the really old group – that is, those hardest hit by the pandemic – hasn’t changed that much, he says.
No record year
Because if you take population into account, 1.1 percent of Sweden’s population died in 1993, compared to “only” 0.9 percent last year, despite the pandemic.
– We have a much lower base mortality now than a few years ago. A much smaller proportion of the population is dying now compared to before. You only need to go back 20 years in time for there to be a difference. We are expected to live longer today, says Linus Garp.
But even in absolute numbers, 2020 is a record year. “All the time,” at least since measurements began in 1749, it is in 1773 that 105,139 Swedes died or the equivalent of 5.3 percent of the population. The cause of this was a malformation in combination with a dysentery epidemic that claimed many lives. Then it comes in 1918 with 104,591 deaths (Spanish flu) and since 1857 when 101,491 people died, mainly from dysentery and cholera.
– There were much larger variations before, from one year to the next. Society was much more vulnerable. It was actually only in the 1950s, when vaccines and other things reduced mortality, that it began to stabilize, says Linus Garp.
