Scotland mortality 2022 week 50

Summary of Scotland’s mortality and excess mortality. All data mortality and population data via National Records of Scotland

A very happy new year to everyone!

• Week 50 revised 1,302 —> 1,321 deaths (+7%)

• Week 51 initially 1,612!!!! deaths (+27%)

• Week 52 initially 1,179 deaths (+11%)

This is not yet the ‘year-end summary’, as next week we expect Week 52 will be revised up slightly which will give us a full year figure. We don’t expect it will be revised up a lot (the last and first weeks of every year are always low due to reporting times over holidays), but next week we can make a full analysis of 2022 versus 2021, 2020 and prior years.

However, without a doubt we can see that the Christmas period was… extraordinary. Week 52 always shows a spike up, but we can see 2022 was far outside the 2015-19 range (the grey shaded section shows the highest and lowest). However if we look back in history we can see we’ve NEVER had a Christmas like this.

This shows total deaths over that Christmas period (weeks 51 & 52) for the past twenty years. In 2020 and 2021 we were told there was a ‘deadly pandemic’, and yet neither of those were as high as we saw in 2017, when it was a normal year. Indeed you can see levels are quite normal. However 2022 by some margin sets a record (and that will be revised up again with the release next week).

In past COVID gene-therapy rollouts we saw an immediate initial jump of excess death, followed 12-16 weeks later by a secondary increase. Clearly we see the same initial jump this time, a hike of 150 deaths per week coinciding with the covid/flu rollout (note correlation is NOT causation, albeit when it happens again and again it must be investigated). We would expect to see a secondary surge of excess death starting around now. We will see in January / February.

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Excess mortality by Location

The huge spike of excess deaths in week 51 we can see is comprised of deaths at home, deaths in hospital and a smattering also of excess deaths in care home settings. Looking across the last two years, deaths at home have been - and remain - by far the majority.

Excess mortality by Cause

This chart we have zoomed in to 2022 only to see the detail.

For Weeks 51 & 52 there’s a sudden burst of ‘respiratory/COVID’ excess (5 jabs later…), but continuing excess in cancer and heart attack / stroke and ‘Others’. Overall we can see ‘Others’ is by far the majority of excess. These are deaths which mostly will be reclassified later into the main categories, but for now were not immediately classifiable.

Excess mortality by Age

The above shows percentage excess by age group. We can see continuing excess in the four eldest age groups, while the three younger are relatively normal. The biggest increase at the end of the year was in the 85 and above.

That is clearly visible on the above chart that shows cumulative excess by age. The line in 85+ sharply angles up at the end of 2022, showing that higher excess.

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Child mortality is normal, albeit infant mortality has been slightly higher in recent weeks - still ‘normal’, just ever so slightly above the 5 year average.

Next week we will try to work up an analysis of 2022 versus prior years - intention is to model the changing population size of each age group, and compare the percent of each age group which passed away each year (to allow for aging population within each group). Hopefully can do that next week after the final Week 52 update from NRS.

Scottish Unity, Edinburgh Group