2. Deaths at hospitals, socio-medical institutions, and home

The proportion of deaths occurring at hospitals, home, and socio-medical institutions varies from one country to the next according to national health structures and modes of residence. For example, in France, a little over a quarter of all deaths occurs at home, 60% at hospitals, and 14% at institutions for seniors.

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed different counts according to place of residence. In France, until 5 April 2020, the total daily count of COVID-19 deaths published by the French national health agency, Santé Publique France, concerned hospital deaths only. A system was then implemented to obtain the number of daily deaths at socio-medical institutions. Taking these latter deaths into account substantially corrected the estimated number of deaths caused by the epidemic, on 21 April 2020 adding nearly 7,900 deaths at socio-medical institutions to the 12,900 deaths having occurred at hospitals up to that point. This change brought the number of deaths in France almost level with that of Italy. Deaths at home have thus far not been counted by Santé Publique France. 

This example shows that caution must be taken in reading deaths, in that they do not always fully cover the place of residence, as is theoretically the case in Italy and Germany. The database that we produce contains information on places of death covered where the information is public, distinguishing between them where possible. We would like to remind our data users of the importance of this information to prevent biases in country comparisons owing to coverage differences in the reporting of information.