The number of excess and exiguous deaths in Japan

• Excess and Exiguous Deaths in Japan | exdeaths-japan.org
  https://exdeaths-japan.org/en/

(The term "exiguous deaths" refers to deficit deaths, or negative excess deaths.)

Researchers in Japan have released an excess mortality dashboard. In Japan, the number of deaths per month is reported but the weekly data is not available. Therefore, a group leading by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases is conducting an analysis of excess deaths using data on all-cause mortality recounted on a weekly basis.

The data and the source code of R used for the analysis are available.

Using 2012-2020 demographic data, they calculated the number of excess and deficit deaths by week and by prefecture. The estimates are based on the Farrington algorithm used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Delays in reporting deaths were weighted and adjusted for.

The excess and deficit deaths ranges, the upper limit is the difference between the actually observed number of deaths and the predicted number of deaths as a point estimate , based on the number of deaths occurring in previous years. The lower limit is the difference between the actually observed number and the 95% one-sided prediction interval（upper and lower bounds）.

The total number of deaths for each prefecture is the cumulative total of excess or deficit deaths over a given period. This total excess is not offset by deficit deaths but is accumulated separately.

Estimates for whole of Japan are the sum of estimates based on data from each prefecture.