Abstract
Introduction. Few studies examined the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on all-cause mortality in Paraguay. Objective. Quantifying the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on all-cause mortality in Paraguay between 2020 and 2022. Material and Method. A custom Bayesian structural time series analysis with autoregressive (AR1) and seasonal components was used to predict counterfactual counts of all-cause mortality and compute excess death. Results. Paraguay reported 122,360 all-cause deaths between 2020-22, compared to an expected 88,988 deaths had the pandemic not occurred, a relative excess mortality of 38%. It is likely that Paraguay undercounted COVID-19 related deaths in the first year of the pandemic. Conclusion. The results presented in this paper extended the knowledge on the impact of COVID-19 on all-cause mortality in the context of Paraguay, being a valuable decision tool for public policy makers. Overall, Paraguay presented good quality of all-cause mortality data, however, high excess mortality should raise concern. Further research is needed to shed light on gender-specific, age-structural or geographical differences and to further identify inequalities.
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