Year-on-year all cause deaths up by 19,500 in February in Japan

Japanese mortality stats get a boost

Sorry for not yet finishing the final part of the series about reasons for Japan’s low Covid death count, but recent events caused me to briefly divert.

Firstly, I had to update past posts since Japan re-extended the expiry date for its excess stock of Pfizer vaccines (now 12 months!), Japan’s severe cases numbers miraculously halved overnight, and the governor of Shimane extended his lead in the Most Annoying Governor contest.

But the most significant news was that Japan saw its highest excess mortality of the pandemic in February.

The raw numbers show about 19,500 more deaths in Feb 22 than Feb 21.

But there were only about 5000 Covid-related deaths (about 40% of which aren’t actually from Covid). So what explains this large jump? Well, nobody knows for certain. But if you want to try answering that question, I’ll give you three shots.