Experts from the University of Toronto in Canada analyzed all the deaths reported in the World Health Organization COVID-19 database between March 7, 2020 and March 7, 2022. The researchers said the global coronavirus death rate was 6% higher on weekends than on weekdays – 8,532 versus 8,083 – throughout the pandemic. Use the Chrome browser for a more accessible video player 2:18 The increase in COVID cases has once again disrupted the transport system NHS Tracker Postcode Search: View your local trust performance year-round The findings, which will be presented at this year’s European Conference on Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Portugal later this month, suggest the UK had an average of 239 deaths at the weekend compared with 215 on a daily basis, an increase of 11%. . The U.S. had an average of 1,483 deaths at the weekend compared to 1,220 on weekdays, an increase of 22%, and Brazil had an average of 1,061 deaths at the weekend compared to 823 on weekdays, an increase of 29%. A further analysis that looked at the average number of COVID deaths on individual days of the week found that the increase was particularly large compared to Sunday to Monday – 8,850 compared to 7,219 deaths – and Friday to Monday – 9,086 compared to 7,219. “This problem is only improving despite awareness” One of the researchers, Dr Fizza Manzoor, said that delays in reporting deaths on weekends did not fully represent differences in different countries, with Germany reporting fewer average deaths on weekends (137) than on weekdays (187). Dr Manzoor said: “The bureaucratic delays on weekends alone do not explain why there are fewer documented deaths from COVID-19 on Mondays than on Fridays and the delays in reporting alone cannot explain why the increase in deaths on weekends was so significant in the US and not observed in the US. Germany. “On the contrary, the ‘weekend effect’ is also likely to be due to a lack of clinical staff, ability and experience. In addition, our findings show that this problem is not solved despite improved health system performance and awareness during the pandemic. “There is an opportunity for health systems to further improve clinical care every day of the week.” The researchers added that accepting the findings of the peer-reviewed study may be limited by false-negative results, lost cases and data entry errors, and that the available data do not take into account the severity of the disease or investigate the impact of local policies. and public health interventions in individual countries.
