COVID deaths during the pandemic were higher on weekends than on weekdays, a global study found.
Experts from the University of Toronto in Canada analyzed all deaths reported in the COVID-19 database of the World Health Organization between March 7, 2020 and March 7, 2022.
Researchers said the average worldwide death rate from coronavirus was 6% higher on weekends than on weekdays – 8,532 versus 8,083 – throughout the pandemic.
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The findings, which will be presented at this year’s European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Portugal later this month, suggest that the United Kingdom had an average of 239 deaths over the weekend, compared with 215 on weekdays. an increase of 11%.
The United States had an average of 1,483 deaths over the weekend, compared with 1,220 on weekdays, an increase of 22%, and Brazil had an average of 1,061 deaths over the weekend, compared with 823 on weekdays, an increase of 29%.
An additional analysis looking at the average number of COVID deaths on individual days of the week found that the increase was particularly high when comparing Sunday to Monday – 8,850 compared to 7,219 deaths – and Friday to Monday – 9,086 compared to 7 219.
“This problem is not improving despite awareness”
One researcher, Dr Fitz Manzur, said that the delay in the reporting of deaths on weekends did not fully explain the differences between countries, with Germany reporting fewer average deaths on weekends (137) than on weekdays (187). ).
Dr Manzur said: “The bureaucratic delays over the weekend do not in themselves explain why there are fewer documented deaths than COVID-19 on Monday than on Friday, and only reporting backlogs cannot explain why the increase in deaths over the weekend it is so significant in the US and not observed in Germany.
“Instead, the ‘weekend effect’ is likely to be due to a shortage of clinical staff, capacity and experience. Moreover, our findings show that this problem is not being addressed despite improved productivity and health system awareness during the pandemic.
“There is scope for health systems to further improve clinical care on all days of the week.”
The researchers added that accepting the findings of a study tested by partners could be limited by false-negative results, missed cases and data entry errors, and that available data did not take into account the severity of the disease or examined the impact of local policies and interventions. public health in individual countries.
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