Methodologies of reporting of COVID-related deaths and number of tests performed varied between countries, influencing official statistics and comparability. Excess mortality is a metric that compares the number of deaths reported in a current year with the average number of deaths in previous years. This metric not only allows reliable comparisons of changes in time and between countries, but it has also been considered a golden standard in analysing the real death toll of the pandemic [1]. Therefore, we used this metric to analyse the course of the pandemic in Poland. The development of the coronavirus epidemic in Poland was significantly delayed, especially in comparison to Western European countries, e.g. the United Kingdom or Italy, where first surge in excess mortality was observed in the spring of 2020. In Poland, we observed no significant excess mortality until autumn 2020. This phenomenon was probably influenced by strict public health measures implemented in the first months of the pandemic, which were gradually loosened in later months [2]. From the beginning of October, the number of excess deaths began to increase exponentially, reaching a peak during 2-8 November (45th week) with 8746 weekly excess deaths. By the end of 2020, a total of 76,655 excess deaths had been observed in Poland [3]. The year 2021 brought 2 visible peaks of excess mortality, first in the spring 2021 (between the 9th and 19th weeks of the year) and then in the autumn/winter 2021 (between the 39th week of 2021 and the 7th week of 2022). Although we still observed excess mortality throughout the year in 2022, the numbers were significantly lower than in the period 2020-2021. The last visible peak was observed in the winter 2022/2023, but it was two-fold lower than the previous peak in the winter of 2021/2022. With that, the active phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland had ceased. The overall toll of the pandemic in Poland between 2020 and 2022 was catastrophic, exceeding 220,000 excess deaths. It was one of the highest numbers of excess deaths in Europe [4] as well as in the world [5]. Furthermore, Poland was one of the countries with the highest discrepancy between the number of excess deaths and officially reported COVID deaths. The number of excess deaths was two-fold higher than official statistics. According to the OECD report, only Bulgaria, Romania, and Estonia presented discrepancies of similar magnitude [6]. There is an urgent need for further studies and cooperation between the state administration and public health researchers to plan an intervention to tackle the ongoing health crisis in Poland.
DISCLOSURE
The authors report no conflict of interest.
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