Abstract
Excess death rates E during the spring of 2020 are computed in N = 519 level 3 European territorial units for statistics —NUTS3 in Netherlands (44), Belgium (40), France (96), Spain (50), Italy (110) and United Kingdom (179)— from 2020 provisional week deaths, the population numbers for 2020, and observations in previous years (reference or baseline), all of them obtained from Eurostat web page.
Excess death rates are classified in three tiers. Largest 27 excess death rates (tier 1, E > 1740 × 10−6) were distributed exponentially with empirical complementary cumulative distribution function (empirical survival function) S following S ∝10−E/ε with ε1 = 3218(150) ×10−6. Tier 2 (next 57 largest excess death rates, E < 1140×10−6 also distributed exponentially with ε2 = 1250(24) × 10−6. Tier 3 (smallest 434 excess death rates) were distributed normally.
Tier 1 occurred mainly in specific regions of Spain and Italy, tier 2 in Spain, Italy and United Kingdom. While the European distribution of excess death rates during the spring of 2020 exhibited this kind of clustering, the exponential distribution suggests that the outcome may have been reached with little interaction between territorial units once communitary spread begun.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
No founding.
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Footnotes
British week deaths were added to the analysis in this new version. Now every major European country largely impacted by COVID-19 during the spring of 2020 is analyzed. The manuscript and figures have been rewritten.
Data Availability
All data were retrieved from Eurostat and the Spanish National Statistics Institute.