Version 1
: Received: 27 November 2020 / Approved: 30 November 2020 / Online: 30 November 2020 (11:08:26 CET)
How to cite:
Rustemeyer, N.; Howells, M. Excess Mortality in England During the 2019 Summer Heatwaves.. Preprints2020, 2020110718. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202011.0718.v1
Rustemeyer, N.; Howells, M. Excess Mortality in England During the 2019 Summer Heatwaves.. Preprints 2020, 2020110718. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202011.0718.v1
Rustemeyer, N.; Howells, M. Excess Mortality in England During the 2019 Summer Heatwaves.. Preprints2020, 2020110718. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202011.0718.v1
APA Style
Rustemeyer, N., & Howells, M. (2020). Excess Mortality in England During the 2019 Summer Heatwaves.. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202011.0718.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Rustemeyer, N. and Mark Howells. 2020 "Excess Mortality in England During the 2019 Summer Heatwaves." Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202011.0718.v1
Abstract
There is increasing evidence that rising temperatures and heatwaves in the United Kingdom are associated with an increase in heat-related mortality. This study aims to retrospectively quantify the impact of heatwaves on mortality during the 2019 summer period using daily death occurrences. Second, it compares excess mortality during the 2019 heatwaves to excess mortality during the 2018 and 2017 heatwave periods. Lastly, it compares the excess mortality in the 2017-2019 heatwaves to the estimated excess deaths for the same period in the Public Health England (PHE) Heatwave mortality monitoring Reports. The cumulative number of excess deaths during the summer 2019 heatwaves were minimal and were substantially lower than during the summer 2018 heatwaves (1,700 deaths) and summer 2017 heatwaves (1,489 deaths). All findings were at variance with the PHE Heatwave mortality monitoring reports which estimated cumulative excess deaths to be 892, 863 and 778 during the summer period of 2019, 2018 and 2017 respectively using provisional death registrations. Issues have been identified in the use of provisional death registrations for mortality monitoring and the reduced reliability of the ONS daily death occurrence database before 2019. These findings may identify more reliable ways to monitor heat mortality during heatwaves in the future.
Keywords
Temperature; Mortality; Heatwave; Epidemiology
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
