Average daily COVID-19 deaths higher on weekends than weekdays, global study finds
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
LISBON, Portugal — The average number of daily COVID-19 deaths is 6% higher on weekends compared with weekdays, according to a global study presented at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Fizza Manzoor, MD, of the University of Toronto, and colleagues conducted a retrospective analysis of deaths reported to the WHO database from March 7, 2020, to March 7, 2022, to determine when COVID-19 deaths were occurring.
They calculated the average number of deaths on weekends and compared them with the average number of the preceding 5 days. This was repeated 10 times for the countries with the highest number of COVID-19 cases — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, India, Brazil and Canada.
On average over the 2-year study period, more people died on a weekend day (n = 8,532) than a weekday (n = 8,083).
Among the 10 countries with the highest case counts, all but Germany reported higher death averages on the weekend when compared with weekdays. The highest absolute increase in weekend deaths occurred in the U.S. (22% increase), Brazil (29% increase) and the U.K. (11% increase).
“The ‘weekend effect’ is likely to be due to shortfalls in clinical staffing, capacity, and experience,” Manzoor said in a statement. “What’s more, our findings suggest that this problem is not resolving despite improved health system performance and awareness over the course of the pandemic. There is an opportunity for health systems to further improve clinical care on all days of the week.”
Because health care systems improved over the course of the pandemic, the researchers also compare weekend deaths from March 2020 to the first half of March 2021 with deaths from the latter half of March 2021 to March 2022. Weekend deaths remained elevated over the 2-year period, with an average of 641 additional weekend deaths in the first year (7,825 vs. 7,184) compared with an average of 257 weekend deaths in the second year (9,239 vs. 8,982).
When assessing average deaths on specific days of the week, Manzoor and colleagues reported larger increases when comparing Sunday with Monday (8,850 vs. 7,219) and Friday with Monday (9,086 vs. 7,219). When comparing average COVID-19 deaths for both weekend days, there was also a difference (Sunday, 8,850 vs. Saturday, 8,071).
“Further studies with detailed clinical data are needed to investigate the drivers of and causes for the risk of death on weekdays and weekends from COVID-19,” Manzoor said.
Collapse
Manzoor KA, et al. Abstract 04960. Presented at: European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases; April 23-26, 2022; Lisbon, Portugal (hybrid meeting).
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts