Abstract
Excess death rates E during the spring of 2020 are computed in N = 540 level 3 European territorial units for statistics —NUTS3 in Belgium (40), France (96), Italy (110), Netherlands (44), Spain (50), Sweden(21) 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 > 1721× 10−6) were distributed exponentially with empirical complementary cumulative distribution function (empirical survival function) S following S ∝ 2−E/ε with ε1 = 958(42) × 10−6. Tier 2 (the next 52 largest excess death rates, E < 1142 × 10−6 also distributed exponentially with ε2 = 379.5(89) ×10−6. Tier 3 (smallest 460 excess death rates) were distributed normally.
The results suggests that when, within some regions, the outbreak is above a threshold, interaction with neighbouring region become less relevant and the outcomes —excess death rates— become exponentially distributed as it happens with independent events.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Funding Statement
No founding.
Author Declarations
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Footnotes
Swedish data were added to the analysis. A bug in the calculation of Italian excess death rates was detected and corrected. The manuscript and figures have been slightly modified and reordered. The Appendix was moved to a Supplementary file.
Data Availability
All data were retrieved from Eurostat and the Spanish National Statistics Institute.