Effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of deaths in Peru: 2017.03-2020.07

Abstract

The objective of the research is to estimate the excess deaths during the COVID-19 epidemic in Peru. The methodology used for the ARMA models with structural with a structural change in mean. In the first place, the results show that the behavior of the number of deaths before the pandemic follows a firstorder auto-regressive process (AR (1)) with a change in the mean in the month of March 2020; while by including the period of the pandemic, the behavior of the number of deaths follows the ARMA (1,1) process with two changes in the mean (March 2018 and March 2020). Second, the results show that the excess mortality during the COVID-19 pandemic between March and July 2020 is 58 885 deaths compared to years under normal conditions.