Standardised excess mortality levels during the COVID-19 outbreak

### The actions of Public Health France Public Health France’s mission is to improve and protect the health of populations. During the health crisis linked to the COVID-19 epidemic, Public Health France is responsible for monitoring and understanding the dynamics of the epidemic, anticipating the various scenarios and implementing actions to prevent and limit the transmission of this virus on the national territory. ### Description of the dataset This dataset describes **the level of standardised excess mortality during the COVID-19 outbreak**, at the departmental and regional level. The level of excess mortality is described for **two age categories**: — for all ages; — for persons over 65 years of age. ##### Method of calculating levels The data are derived from the administrative part of the death certificate, collected by the civil registry offices of the municipalities having a dematerialised transmission with INSEE. The observed number of deaths is compared to an expected number, estimated from a statistical model established by [the EuroMomo consortium](https://www.euromomo.eu/) and used by 24 countries or regions in Europe. The estimation of excess deaths is based on the calculation of a standardised indicator (Z-score), which makes it possible to compare excesses between different geographical levels or age groups. The Z-score is calculated by the formula: (observed number — expected number)/standard deviation of expected number. The five categories of excess are defined as follows: — No excess: standardised Death Indicator (Z-score) < 2 — Moderate excess of death: standardised Death Indicator (Z-score) between 2 and 4.99 — High excess of death: standardised Death Indicator (Z-score) between 5 and 6.99: — Very high excess of death: standardised Death Indicator (Z-score) between 7 and 11.99: Exceptional excess of standardised death indicator of death (Z-score) greater than 12 ##### Limits of the calculation method The estimated excesses are established on a set of 3000 municipalities for which Santé publique France has a long history of data. These 3000 municipalities account for 77 % of national mortality, varying from 63 % to 96 % depending on the regions and from 42 % to 98 % depending on the departments. Taking into account the legal deadlines for declaring a death to civil status and the time taken by the civil registry office to enter the information, a period between the occurrence of the death and the arrival of the information at Santé publique France is observed. This period can be extended punctually (public holidays, extended weekends, bridges, school holidays, very strong epidemic period, confinement). Mortality data are considered consolidated within 30 days.