ONS have published an excess deaths comparison between European countries (link at bottom of this post) which covers 2020 from Jan 1st up to 12th June (week 24) although most of the tables and comparison only relate to week 22 (29th May) because data isn't available for Czech Republic, Italy, Luxembourg and Slovakia after week 22. It's pretty clear that extending the analysis to week 24 makes England look even worse, because our excess deaths have stayed higher for longer.
England is the worst in Europe for excess death rates, followed by Spain, Scotland then Belgium.
Using figures up to week 22 shows that England's excess death rate is 13% higher than Spain's.
Using figures up to week 24 shows England 26% higher than Spain. (This isn't in the report, but I calculated it from the Excel files attached with the report).
Slightly surprisingly, the main focus of the report appears to be on peak deaths, and you need to get to Section 7 before seeing results for overall highest excess deaths. (Spain had the highest peak week of any country.)
Figure 3 is interesting, as it's an animated time-lapse map showing hot-spots in Europe, and shows clearly how Italy was able to contain Covid-19 in most of its regions.
ONS use 3 different measures of age-standardisation to more fairly compare different countries, but basically the principle to compare a country's average death rate over a 5-year period with its death rate in 2020. Basically measuring differences of each country to its normal death rates.
ONS also split down the figures to under-65s and over-65s.
These figures from Table 2 of the report show the %increase in mortality compared to the 5-year average.
Up to and including week 22, England is noticeably higher than any other country - almost twice as bad as Belgium, the 4th worst country.
(BBC initially headlined this report as "England among worse countries in Europe" - which is true in much the same way that Liverpool were among the highest points scorers in this season's Premiership contest, or Usain Blot was amongst the fastest sprinters in the 100m Olympics finals).
All 4 home nations are in the top 10, and from the 10th country downwards, they actually have negative excess deaths - which is what might be expected of countries that have successfully contained Covid-19 by measures which also reduced the potential for transmission of other infectious diseases as well, and promoting better hygiene practices.
Up to week 22 (29th May)
1. England 7.55%
2 Spain 6.65
3 Scotland 5.11
4 Belgium 3.89
5 Wales 2.78
6 Sweden 2.26
7 Netherlands 2.21
8 Northern Ireland 2.03
9 France 0.16
10 Iceland -0.38
Up to week 24 (12th June) - not in the report, but taken from the attached Excel tables) (excludes Italy, Czech, Slovakia, Luxembourg).
1. England 7.61%
2. Spain 6.00%
3- are similar to week 22.
Interesting graphs in Figure 5a, which show U-65 and 65+ death rates by country.
For over-65s, England excess death rate is similar to Spain's.
However, for under-65s, England's excess death rate is around 5% which is way higher than the next highest (Spain) at 2%.
Outside the UK and Spain, excess death rates for U-65 year olds were actually negative.
As far as cities go, Madrid has suffered most. Its over-65 excess death rate was twice as high as London, although its under-65 death rate was similar to London's. London is unusual because the excess death rates for under-65s and over-65s is almost identical.
Stockholm's excess death rate for over-65s is also quite bad, but under-65s appear to have got away very lightly with Sweden's "go-out-but-be-careful" non-lockdown policy.
ONS's statistician's comment from the report
"Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the first half of 2020 saw extraordinary increases in mortality rates across countries in Western Europe above the 2015 to 2019 average.
“The highest peak excess mortality at national level was in Spain, with some local areas in Northern Italy and Central Spain having excess mortality levels as high as 847.7% of the average.
“While none of the four UK nations had a peak mortality level as high as Spain or the worst-hit local areas of Spain and Italy, excess mortality was geographically widespread throughout the UK during the pandemic, whereas it was more geographically localised in most countries of Western Europe.
“Combined with the relatively slow downward ‘tail’ of the pandemic in the UK, this meant that by the end of May, England had seen the highest overall relative excess mortality out of all the European countries compared.”
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulation ... tojune2020