Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.
In April 2020 Eurostat set up an exceptional data collection on total weekly deaths, in order to support the policy and research efforts related to Covid-19. With this data collection, Eurostat's target was to provide quickly statistics that show the changing situation of the total number of weekly deaths from early 2020 onwards.
The available data on the total weekly deaths are transmitted by the National Statistical Institutes to Eurostat on voluntary basis. Data are collected cross classified by sex, 5-year age-groups and NUTS3 region (NUTS2021). The age breakdown by 5-year age group is the most significant and should be considered by the reporting countries as the main option; when that is not possible, data may be provided with less granularity. Similar with the regional structure, data granularity varies with the country.
Eurostat requested from the National Statistical Institutes the transmission of a back time series of weekly deaths for as many year as possible, recommending as starting point the year 2000. Shorter time series, imposed by data availability, are transmitted by some countries. A long enough time series is necessary for temporal comparisons and statistical modelling.
A note on Ireland: Data from Ireland were not included in the first phase of the weekly deaths data collection: official timely data were not available because deaths can be registered up to three months after the date of death. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Statistics Office of Ireland began to explore experimental ways of obtaining up-to-date mortality data, finding a strong correlation between death notices published on RIP.ie and official mortality statistics. Recently, CSO Ireland started publishing a time series covering the period from October 2019 until the most recent weeks, using death notices (see CSO website). For the purpose of this release, Eurostat compared the new 2020-2021 web-scraped series with a 2016-2019 baseline established using official data. CSO is periodically assessing the quality of these data.
The purpose of Eurostat’s online tables in the folder Weekly deaths - special data collection (demomwk) is to make available to users information on the weekly number of deaths disaggregated by sex, 5 years age group and NUTS3 regions over the last 20 years, depending on the availability in each country covered in Eurostat demographic statistics data collections. In order to ensure the highest timeliness possible, data are made available as reported by the countries, and work is ongoing in order to improve data quality and user friendliness.
Starting in 2025, the weekly deaths data will be collected on a quarterly basis. The next database updates are expected by mid-June 2025 (1st quarter), mid-September 2025 (2nd quarter), mid-December 2025 (3rd quarter), and mid-February 2026 (4th quarter).
The definition of ‘week’ is given by ISO8601 week number.
3.3. Coverage - sector
Not applicable.
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
Death means the permanent disappearance of all evidence of life at any time after life birth has taken place (postnatal cessation of vital functions without capability of resuscitation).
Eurostat's recommendation for the definition of time of death is by ‘date of occurrence’, but data by ‘date of registration’ are accepted.
3.5. Statistical unit
Death, as vital event.
3.6. Statistical population
Deaths occurying to the usual resident population in the territory.
3.7. Reference area
Country and regions within the country, depending on data transmited by the national statistical institutes.
3.8. Coverage - Time
Week.
The definition of ‘week’ is given by ISO8601 week number.
3.9. Base period
Not applicable.
Number.
Calendar week (ISO8601).
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
National Statistical Institutes are transmitting weekly deaths statistics to Eurostat on voluntary basis.
Weekly death data are updated and revised on a continuous base according to the most recent data released and transmitted to Eurostat by the National Statistical Institutes.
Eurostat efforts are concentrated on providing quickly statistics that show the changing situation as concerns the total number of weekly deaths from early 2020 onwards. Work is ongoing to improve data quality and user friendliness.
Incoming weekly statistics subject to plausibility and additivity checks.
Weekly deaths data totals may be different from other annual or monthly deaths series published in Eurostat's online tables demo_magec, demo_mmonth, demo_r_magec and demo_r_magec3 due to possibly different concepts used in the countries to produce, as requested by Eurostat, the week death series with a very short time delay.
Higher level totals by age or by region may not always be available if they were not transmitted by the countries.
11.2. Quality management - assessment
Data referring to recent weeks may be under-reporting the actual number of deaths and they are likely to be revised.
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
Eurostat set up an exceptional data collection on total weekly deaths in order to support the policy and research efforts related to Covid-19.
Analysis of weekly excess deaths could provide an additional method to assess the pandemic and formulate lessons to be learned. Excess deaths may be obtained by comparing the observed weekly deaths to values expected based on previous years. This approach has the advantage of being comparable across countries.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
No user satisfaction surveys are carried out.
12.3. Completeness
The data collection is done on voluntary basis. Data completness fully depends on the tranmissions made by the national statisticsl institutes to Eurostat and on the data availability at national level.
13.1. Accuracy - overall
Data referring to recent weeks may be under-reporting the actual number of deaths and they are likely to be revised. The table below offers a preview on data coverage for the most recent weeks for which data were received by Eurostat from the countries, where this information is available. For some countries information on data coverage is available by week, starting from the most recent week and going back to previous several weeks, while for others the information on coverage refers to all weekly deaths data available so far.
Estimated percentage of data completeness by country and time lag (in weeks) from the latest available reference week: see the attached file.
The latest available weekly data are transmitted by the national statistical institutes to Eurostat every month. No reference week is set up, as every country has its own data processing and release calendar. Data are processed by Eurostat as soon as they are transmitted, for a timely dissemination.
14.2. Punctuality
Not applicable.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
Eurostat’s recommendation for the definition of time of death is by ‘date of occurrence’, but data by ‘date of registration’ are accepted.
The definition of time of death was reported by the countries as follows (more information will be added):
date of occurrence: BE, BG, CZ, DK, DE, IE, EE, EL, ES, FR, HR, IT, CY, LV, LT, LU, HU, MT, NL, AT, PL, PT, RO, SI, SK, FI, SE, IS, LI, NO, CH, ME, AL, RS, AD, GE;
date of registration: UK (data available until the end of 2020) and AM.
Notes by country:
Hungary, Latvia and Sweden have reported a number of deaths where the week of death is unknown. The respective data for the unknown week of death, previously published online under the code TIME=YYYYW99, are now only available within the respective Excel file published below (concept's annexes).
Estonian data from 2000-2019 is under the old NUTS-2016 classification.
Data referring to recent weeks may be under-reporting the actual number of deaths and they are likely to be revised.
Not applicable.
17.1. Data revision - policy
The general Eurostat revision policy applies to this domain. Eurostat carry out updates as soon as updated data are received from the national statistical institutes.
17.2. Data revision - practice
Weekly deaths statistics are revised on a continuous base according to the most recent data released and transmitted to Eurostat by the National Statistical Institutes. The geographical aggregates and the demographic indicators are accordingly revised.
The status of the data is indicated by using flags (flag p = provisional data; flag e = estimated; flag b = break in time series; flag f = forecast).
All reported errors (once validated) result in corrections of the disseminated data.
Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.
Data may be published even if they are missing for certain countries or flagged as provisional or estimated for certain countries. They are replaced with final data once transmitted and validated. European aggregates and demographic indicators are updated for consistency with new country data.
Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated and European aggregates and demographic indicators are accordingly revised.
Data are usually revised for the last period. Countries however may choose the length of the revisions depending on the need. In principle, aggregates and components are revised at the same time or soon after a data revision is received by Eurostat. There are no routine revisions aiming at adjusting weekly time series of deaths to have temporal consistency with the yearly series. Revisions are published continuously as soon as received by Eurostat.Routine revisions are documented and monitored internally and communicated in the metadata files available in dissemination (coverage coefficients).
The impacts of major revisions are communicated in working documents produced for experts meetings held with representatives of National Statistical Institutes.
18.1. Source data
Data are collected by Eurostat from the national statistical institutes.
18.2. Frequency of data collection
Weekly.
18.3. Data collection
In April 2020, Eurostat set up an exceptional data collection on total weekly deaths. Data are transmitted by the national statistical institutes on voluntary basis, depending on data availability at national level.
18.4. Data validation
Eurostat efforts are concentrated on providing quickly statistics that show the changing situation as concerns the total number of weekly deaths from early 2020 onwards. Work is ongoing to improve data quality and user friendliness.
Incoming weekly statistics are subject to additivity and plausibility checks.
Weekly deaths data totals may be different from other annual or monthly deaths series published in Eurostat's online tables demo_magec, demo_mmonth, demo_r_magec and demo_r_magec3 due to possibly different concepts used in the countries to produce, as requested by Eurostat, the week death series with a very short time delay.
Higher level totals by age or by region may not always be available if they were not transmitted by the countries.
18.5. Data compilation
Not applicable.
18.6. Adjustment
Not applicable.
Not applicable.
In April 2020 Eurostat set up an exceptional data collection on total weekly deaths, in order to support the policy and research efforts related to Covid-19. With this data collection, Eurostat's target was to provide quickly statistics that show the changing situation of the total number of weekly deaths from early 2020 onwards.
The available data on the total weekly deaths are transmitted by the National Statistical Institutes to Eurostat on voluntary basis. Data are collected cross classified by sex, 5-year age-groups and NUTS3 region (NUTS2021). The age breakdown by 5-year age group is the most significant and should be considered by the reporting countries as the main option; when that is not possible, data may be provided with less granularity. Similar with the regional structure, data granularity varies with the country.
Eurostat requested from the National Statistical Institutes the transmission of a back time series of weekly deaths for as many year as possible, recommending as starting point the year 2000. Shorter time series, imposed by data availability, are transmitted by some countries. A long enough time series is necessary for temporal comparisons and statistical modelling.
A note on Ireland: Data from Ireland were not included in the first phase of the weekly deaths data collection: official timely data were not available because deaths can be registered up to three months after the date of death. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Central Statistics Office of Ireland began to explore experimental ways of obtaining up-to-date mortality data, finding a strong correlation between death notices published on RIP.ie and official mortality statistics. Recently, CSO Ireland started publishing a time series covering the period from October 2019 until the most recent weeks, using death notices (see CSO website). For the purpose of this release, Eurostat compared the new 2020-2021 web-scraped series with a 2016-2019 baseline established using official data. CSO is periodically assessing the quality of these data.
The purpose of Eurostat’s online tables in the folder Weekly deaths - special data collection (demomwk) is to make available to users information on the weekly number of deaths disaggregated by sex, 5 years age group and NUTS3 regions over the last 20 years, depending on the availability in each country covered in Eurostat demographic statistics data collections. In order to ensure the highest timeliness possible, data are made available as reported by the countries, and work is ongoing in order to improve data quality and user friendliness.
Starting in 2025, the weekly deaths data will be collected on a quarterly basis. The next database updates are expected by mid-June 2025 (1st quarter), mid-September 2025 (2nd quarter), mid-December 2025 (3rd quarter), and mid-February 2026 (4th quarter).
3 March 2025
Death means the permanent disappearance of all evidence of life at any time after life birth has taken place (postnatal cessation of vital functions without capability of resuscitation).
Eurostat's recommendation for the definition of time of death is by ‘date of occurrence’, but data by ‘date of registration’ are accepted.
Death, as vital event.
Deaths occurying to the usual resident population in the territory.
Country and regions within the country, depending on data transmited by the national statistical institutes.
Calendar week (ISO8601).
Data referring to recent weeks may be under-reporting the actual number of deaths and they are likely to be revised. The table below offers a preview on data coverage for the most recent weeks for which data were received by Eurostat from the countries, where this information is available. For some countries information on data coverage is available by week, starting from the most recent week and going back to previous several weeks, while for others the information on coverage refers to all weekly deaths data available so far.
Estimated percentage of data completeness by country and time lag (in weeks) from the latest available reference week: see the attached file.
Data are collected by Eurostat from the national statistical institutes.
Weekly death data are updated and revised on a continuous base according to the most recent data released and transmitted to Eurostat by the National Statistical Institutes.
The latest available weekly data are transmitted by the national statistical institutes to Eurostat every month. No reference week is set up, as every country has its own data processing and release calendar. Data are processed by Eurostat as soon as they are transmitted, for a timely dissemination.
Eurostat’s recommendation for the definition of time of death is by ‘date of occurrence’, but data by ‘date of registration’ are accepted.
The definition of time of death was reported by the countries as follows (more information will be added):
date of occurrence: BE, BG, CZ, DK, DE, IE, EE, EL, ES, FR, HR, IT, CY, LV, LT, LU, HU, MT, NL, AT, PL, PT, RO, SI, SK, FI, SE, IS, LI, NO, CH, ME, AL, RS, AD, GE;
date of registration: UK (data available until the end of 2020) and AM.
Notes by country:
Hungary, Latvia and Sweden have reported a number of deaths where the week of death is unknown. The respective data for the unknown week of death, previously published online under the code TIME=YYYYW99, are now only available within the respective Excel file published below (concept's annexes).
Estonian data from 2000-2019 is under the old NUTS-2016 classification.
