Assessing excess mortality is a standard technique for determining the mortality effect of a disease outbreak that does not rely on accurate reporting of cases of disease. It involves estimating the number of deaths that would have occured using historical trends, then comparing that to the number of deaths observed.

Research has shown that in the case of COVID-19, many cases are undetected, which can result in an undercount of COVID derived mortality.

As of December 12th, 2020, the CDC estimates 352,650 excess deaths during the period of Mar 8th-Dec 12th.

How many excess deaths will the United States experience during COVID-19 (March 8th 2020 through December 31st 2021)?

This question resolves based on the excess deaths reported by the CDC for the period of March 8th 2020 to December 31st, 2021 on or before February 28th, 2022.

The value will be determined by downloading the CSV file provided on this site from the CDC. The value is calculated by summing the values in the "Observed Number" column and substracting the values in the "Average Expected Count" column for the weeks labeled 3/14/2020 through the date closest to 12/31/2021.

If this table is no longer being maintained in its exact form, then any comparable data source from the CDC will be used. If no such source is available from the CDC, then a comparable source from another reputable source will be used.