Department of Preventive Medicine, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, 60-356 Poznan, Poland.
Department of Organization and Management in Health Care, Poznan University of Medical Sciences, 60-356 Poznan, Poland.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Mar 20;19(6):3692. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19063692.
The issue whether official Polish COVID-19 death statistics correctly reflect the actual number of deaths is a contentious issue in public discourse and an important policy-wise question in Poland although it has not been the subject of thorough research so far. There had been clearly elevated excess mortality-5100 (death rate of 2.3 per 10,000) during the first wave, 77,500 (21.0 per 10,000) during the second one, and 48,900 (13.5 per 10,000) in the third. This study finds that during the second and the third pandemic wave, our data on excess mortality will match very well the somewhat belatedly officially reported COVID-19 deaths if we assume that only 60% of cases were officially detected. Based on principal component analysis of death timing, except for the age bracket below 40, where COVID-19 deaths calculated on the basis of our model explain 55% of excess mortality, for the remaining age groups, combined COVID-19 deaths explain 95% of excess mortality. Based on the share of excess mortality attributable to COVID-19 during the second wave, this infection in Poland caused the death of 73,300 people and not of 37,600 as officially reported. The third wave caused 46,200 deaths instead of the reported 34,700. The first wave was, indeed, as officially reported, very mild, and the number of excess deaths was too low to be used to calculate COVID-19 deaths directly. However, assuming that the detection rate remained comparable to the average in subsequent waves, we can set the number of deaths at 3500 instead of the reported 2100.
波兰官方 COVID-19 死亡统计数据是否正确反映实际死亡人数是公共话语中的一个有争议的问题，也是波兰政策制定中的一个重要问题，尽管迄今为止尚未对此进行彻底研究。在第一波疫情期间，超额死亡率明显升高-5100（每 10000 人 2.3 人死亡），第二波疫情期间为 77500（每 10000 人 21.0 人死亡），第三波疫情期间为 48900（每 10000 人 13.5 人死亡）。本研究发现，如果我们假设只有 60%的病例被官方检测到，那么在第二波和第三波大流行期间，我们关于超额死亡率的数据将与官方报告的 COVID-19 死亡人数非常吻合。基于死亡时间的主成分分析，除了 40 岁以下年龄组外，根据我们的模型计算的 COVID-19 死亡人数解释了 55%的超额死亡率，对于其余年龄组，合并的 COVID-19 死亡人数解释了 95%的超额死亡率。根据第二波疫情期间 COVID-19 超额死亡率的比例，这种感染在波兰导致 73300 人死亡，而不是官方报告的 37600 人。第三波疫情导致 46200 人死亡，而不是报告的 34700 人。第一波疫情确实像官方报告的那样非常轻微，超额死亡人数太低，无法直接用于计算 COVID-19 死亡人数。然而，假设后续波次的检测率与平均值保持一致，我们可以将死亡人数设定为 3500 人，而不是报告的 2100 人。
