Excess Mortality and its Determinants During the COVID-19 Pandemic in 21 Countries: An Ecological Study from the C-MOR Project, 2020 and 2021.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic overwhelmed health systems, resulting in a surge in excess deaths. This study clustered countries based on excess mortality to understand their response to the pandemic and the influence of various factors on excess mortality within each cluster.

Materials And Methods: This ecological study is part of the COVID-19 MORtality (C-MOR) Consortium.

Estimated number of lives directly saved by COVID-19 vaccination programmes in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023: a retrospective surveillance study.

Background: By March, 2023, 54 countries, areas, and territories (hereafter CAT) in the WHO European Region had reported more than 2·2 million COVID-19-related deaths to the WHO Regional Office for Europe. Here, we estimated how many lives were directly saved by vaccinating adults in the WHO European Region from December, 2020, to March, 2023.

Methods: In this retrospective surveillance study, we estimated the number of lives directly saved by age group, vaccine dose, and circulating variant-of-concern (VOC) period, regionally and nationally, using weekly data on COVID-19 mortality and infection, COVID-19 vaccination uptake, and SARS-CoV-2 virus characterisations by lineage downloaded from The European Surveillance System on June 11, 2023, as well as vaccine effectiveness data from the literature.

COVID-19 Clusters in Belgian Nursing Homes: Impact of Facility Characteristics and Vaccination on Cluster Occurrence, Duration and Severity.

COVID-19 severely affected nursing home residents from March 2020 onwards in Belgium. This study aimed to model the impact of vaccination and facility characteristics on cluster occurrence, duration and severity in this setting. Possible clusters were identified between June 2020 and January 2022, based on the Belgian COVID-19 surveillance in nursing homes.

Effect of COVID-19 Vaccination Campaign in Belgian Nursing Homes on COVID-19 Cases, Hospital Admissions, and Deaths among Residents.

In view of the grave situation during the first two waves of SARS-CoV-2 virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2), nursing homes (NHs) were prioritised for vaccination once vaccines became available in Belgium. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of the COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) vaccination campaign on COVID-19 cases, hospital admissions, and deaths among residents living in Belgian NHs. All 1545 Belgian NHs were invited to participate in a COVID-19 surveillance program.