# Mortality and Infection rates in Ireland versus other European countries



## Wollie (31 Jul 2020)

The UK Office for National Statistics yesterday published comparative mortality rates for various European countries and regions.  It got a lot of publicity because it showed England having the highest excess deaths.  I couldn't see any figures for Ireland in the report.  Are they not available for Ireland?


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## odyssey06 (31 Jul 2020)

The only excess mortality figures for Ireland I have seen based them on RIP.IE -so maybe as not an official source could not be included.




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						COVID-19 causes 13% increase in deaths in Ireland between March and June 2020 - HIQA | HIQA
					






					www.hiqa.ie


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## Wollie (31 Jul 2020)

A pity that the absence of data means that we can't be compared with other countries/ regions.  As an aside, I wonder about the reliability of rip.ie, because of the tendency to put in the same person a number of times in rip.ie if they lived in different counties during their lives.  If they're comparing this year with last year, what they've done is probably ok, since there was the same tendency last year, not if they're comparing with other data sources.


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## odyssey06 (31 Jul 2020)

Wollie said:


> A pity that the absence of data means that we can't be compared with other countries/ regions.  As an aside, I wonder about the reliability of rip.ie, because of the tendency to put in the same person a number of times in rip.ie if they lived in different counties during their lives.  If they're comparing this year with last year, what they've done is probably ok, since there was the same tendency last year, not if they're comparing with other data sources.



Yes RIP.IE isn't a perfect source.
But I assume some sort of de-duing was done on the data set though, checking for the same name and date of death with different counties.

Also, I see one of the comparison factors on your linked article was rate of urbanisation. 
Ireland could be compared with Scotland but comparing us with England seems unreliable.

I just skimmed the article but I'd be curious if the % difference between excess mortality deaths and coronavirus deaths (i.e. positive test) was broadly similar across countries. Then for the purposes of comparison we could use the official positive test deaths figure.


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## Brendan Burgess (1 Aug 2020)

odyssey06 said:


> Yes RIP.IE isn't a perfect source.



I heard a discussion some time back comparing the deaths reported on RIP.ie with the actual deaths some months later and it was about 99% right. 

The statistician involved said it was reliable. 

Brendan


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## joe sod (1 Aug 2020)

Wollie said:


> A pity that the absence of data means that we can't be compared with other countries/ regions.


Yes sure we have a CSO surely they should be doing statistics on deaths in Ireland since its a very important topic and we are all going to die. They seem to spend alot of time doing statistics and surveys on trivial matters.


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## Leo (4 Aug 2020)

joe sod said:


> Yes sure we have a CSO surely they should be doing statistics on deaths in Ireland



Ah, they do!


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## Purple (28 Sep 2020)

The rate of infection has been increasing since the end of July but so has the rate of testing. 
The rolling by-weekly fatality rate has been flat since June. Have anyone got any specific information on this and the expected lag between infection rates and deaths?


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