The authors compared Austrian national all-cause and cause-specific mortality in 2024 against 2017 to 2019, using death certificates in which the underlying cause carried half the weight and contributing causes shared the rest. In every group aged 60 and over, 2024 all-cause rates were equal to or lower than 2019, and the ratio of weighted to unweighted COVID-19 death rates was 0.51 to 0.58. Rates were higher than 2019 among adolescents and young adults.
Why it is interesting: It puts a figure on how much of a recorded COVID death count rests on attribution convention rather than on excess mortality, where complete multiple-cause certificates exist.