(Newsletter: CRVS Insight April 2022)

The Stats Café on Excess mortality and the importance of data in the fight against COVID-19 will be organized virtually on 20 April 2022, 13:00-14:30 hours, Bangkok time (UTC+7).

More than two years into the pandemic, several vaccines and new treatments have been developed, but are we any closer to estimating the true death toll of COVID-19? Demographers, data scientists and epidemiologists have turned to the estimation of excess mortality to try to understand just how many people died as a result of COVID-19.  

Being able to ascertain the true impact of COVID-19 on human lives is critical for informing resource allocation and assessing the effectiveness of public health interventions as the pandemic evolves. However, many countries still lack functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems to provide accurate, complete and timely data on deaths and causes of death.

This Stats Café aims to share a snapshot of some of the varied approaches taken by countries and organizations to produce estimates of excess mortality, as well as providing a journalistic insight of best practices in reporting on it. 

Please register here. More information on ESCAP Stats Café webpage is here.