CG REPORT 6 Q1: What were mortality rates in care homes by country?

Our report on care homes includes three distinct questions and we’ve addressed each one individually. Follow the links for Question 2 and Question 3. You can also read and download the full report here.

CG Report 6 retrieved data for 25 countries, and also found regional data for two countries, the UK and Canada. Not every country had up to date data on care home mortality – end dates for acquiring care home death data ranged from August 2020 (Hungary) to as recent as November 2021 for (Canada) Ontario. The most up-to-date data (to September 2021) came from Australia, Belgium, Canada (British Columbia), Denmark, Hungary, the UK and the US.

We also found considerable variation in how each country defined ‘care home’, which could account for variation in mortality rates, and which prevented further analysis by type of residency (e.g., care home, nursing home, long term care facility, or staffing levels etc.).

Overall, analysis of mortality data found that care home deaths as a proportion of total deaths ranged from 9% in Lithuania to 64% in New Zealand, with an average of 30%, as summarized below. Seven countries reported more than 10,000 COVID care homes deaths: Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, the UK and the US.