"Background
Causes of death other than COVID-19 seem to contribute significantly to the excess mortality observed during the 2020–2022 pandemic. In this study, we explore changes in non-COVID-19 causes of death in Norway during the COVID-19 pandemic from March 2020 to December 2022.
Methods
We performed a population-based cross-sectional study on data from the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry. All recorded deaths from 1st January 2010 to 31st December 2022 were included. The main outcome measures were the number of deaths and age-standardised death rate (ASMR) per 100000 population from the major cause of death groups in 2020, 2021 and 2022...
Key results
Excess non-COVID-19 mortality was seen in Norway from October 2021 through 2022 and cumulatively comprised 3632 (46.9%) of 7744 net excess deaths (ASMR 57.3, 40.7%). This was mainly driven by an increase in cardiovascular deaths, accounting for 44.6% of net cumulative excess deaths (ASMR 56.6%)... The number of cancer deaths was significantly but marginally higher than predicted in 2022 (3.5% of net excess deaths, ASMR 2.3%)...
Interpretation
... There has been some opposition to mass vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic due to concerns about potential harmful effects of allegedly insufficiently tested vaccines. There is a temporal concordance between increasing vaccine coverage and increasing excess mortality. From data available to us, it was not possible to compare excess mortality in vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals."
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