Death and death certificate A review of death certificates from the Directorate of Health has revealed that there have been 153 deaths in Iceland due to COVID-19 from the beginning of the epidemic until 1 April 2022. These are deaths where COVID-19 has been detected within 28 days prior to death and caused the death of the person in question on the death certificate. Mortgage certificates do not normally reach the Director of Health until weeks after death, and are therefore not suitable for monitoring the cause of death in real time. Hospitals had sent reports directly to the Chief Epidemiologist regarding deaths due to COVID-19 since the beginning of the epidemic.

In total, 101 notifications of death have been received by the Chief Epidemiologist during the period stated above. In 2020, two deaths were not reported and in 2022, 50 deaths were not reported based on a death certificate. The explanation for the fact that not all deaths were reported directly to the Chief Epidemiologist this year is that it was not requested until the end of February 2022 that all healthcare facilities send such notifications. Nursing homes did not send notifications directly to the Chief Epidemiologist at the beginning of the year and not all have been able to send them. The nursing homes and the Chief Epidemiologist have been aware of this discrepancy and that the final number of COVID-19-related deaths would not be known until after the review of death certificates. Institutions continue to be asked to report deaths due to COVID-19 directly to the Chief Epidemiologist, but the final number of deaths is then according to death certificates.

In April, 18 deaths were reported and one of those was in May.

Excess deaths

As has been mentioned before, the most reliable method of estimating the number of deaths in COVID-19 is probably to examine excess deaths, in which case the number of deaths from all causes is compared with the average number of deaths in recent years. When excess mortality is examined in this way in Iceland, a significant increase is seen in March 2022 in individuals older than 70 years, but no increase is seen for the total number of deaths. However, a significant reduction in deaths among those over 70 years of age was seen in 2020 and 2021 (see the report on the website of the Office of the Chief Epidemiologist on 28 April).

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently published a review of excess deaths in the world during COVID-19 for 2020 and 2021, and according to these estimates, deaths were grossly undercounted but varied by country/region.

The Chief Epidemiologist