Evaluating the COVID-19 responses of Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, February–June 2020: a counterfactual modeling study

Table 1 Cumulative COVID-19-attributed deaths per million inhabitants per country until 1st of July 2020. Diagonal elements show observed mortality and off-diagonal elements show mortality (median with 95% credible intervals) for counterfactual strategies, using the reduction in R_t with control measures relative to the R_t without control measures. In this approach, the relative reduction in the reproduction number R_t from the “donor” country is transposed to the “recipient” country, starting on 13th March 2020. The multiplication factors visually show per column how the mortality of the counterfactual response would have changed relative to observed mortality. A factor above 1 indicates an increase in deaths with the counterfactual response, while a factor below 1 indicates a decrease

Response as implemented in a country (donor country)	Outcome of response when applied to a country (recipient country)
	Belgium		Denmark		Germany		Netherlands		Sweden		UK
	Cum. deaths per million	MF^a	Cum. deaths	MF^a	Cum. deaths per million	MF^a	Cum. deaths per million	MF^a	Cum. deaths per million	MF^a	Cum. deaths per million	MF^a
Belgium	840	2.4	117 [75–177]	2.2	72 [53–98]	2.4	850 [661–1091]	2.4	141 [95–204]	2.3	455 [347–595]	2.4
Denmark	878 [607–1255]	2.5	105	1.9	73 [47–115]	2.4	887 [610–1270]	2.5	133 [83–214]	2.1	484 [306–754]	2.6
Germany	1205 [928–1553]	3.4	167 [107–253]	3.1	108	3.6	1221 [956–1558]	3.4	206 [138–300]	3.3	672 [513–876]	3.6
Netherlands	354 [270–462]	1.0	54 [35–81]	1.0	30 [22–40]	1.0	361	1.0	62 [42–88]	1.0	188 [148–239]	1.0
Sweden	2556 [2044–3174]	7.2	378 [241–579]	7.0	363 [246–529]	12.1	2560 [2030–3195]	7.1	546	8.8	1752 [1250–2349]	9.3
UK	1076 [838–1376]	3.0	140 [90–214]	2.6	94 [70–127]	3.1	1088 [874–1348]	3.0	176 [118–258]	2.8	599	3.2

^aMF is the multiplicative factor in deaths compared to the number of deaths estimated with the response of the Netherlands (= 1). The counterfactual comparisons between Denmark, Sweden, and the UK slightly deviate from the analysis of Mishra et al. [5] due to the use of a different generation time

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