Motivated by The Economist's analysis in “Tracking COVID-19 excess deaths across countries” (The Economist,2021), this study aims to explore the discrepancy between official death counts and overall excess deaths attributedto the COVID-19 pandemic, with a focus on four Latin American countries: Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru.These countries are hypothesized to exhibit underreported COVID-19 mortality due to factors like underreporting,misclassification, and healthcare system overload (Litewka and Heitman, 2020).
The adoption of a Bayesian approach, utilizing the Integrated Nested Laplace Approximation (INLA) (Rue etal., 2009), was selected to address the limitations of linear models in The Economist's analysis. This methodallows for a more flexible and nuanced analysis of mortality data, accommodating country-specific complexities anduncertainties. By applying Bayesian modeling, this study aims to deepen the understanding of COVID-19’s impactin Latin America and contribute to the global discussion on pandemic mortality reporting
covid-19-excess-deaths.Rmd- source codecovid-19-excess-deaths.pdf- final report
