Introduction:

Mortality from COVID-19 is increasing, this being a concern for the authorities and the general population.

Objective:

To estimate the existence of an excess of total deaths between the months of March to May 2020 with respect to the number of deaths from COVID-19 reported by the Ministry of Health for COVID-19 and to establish a relationship between the excess of total deaths and the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru.

Methods:

We compared the gap between the National Death System (SINADEF) with the oficial reported deaths from COVID -19 from march 1st to may 31th, 2020; Violent deaths (homicide, suicide, traffic accident; other accidents and unknown deaths) were excluded. To estimate the deaths baseline was used a seasonal linear regression, from January 1st, 2017 to December 31th, 2019 with a 95% confidence intervals. The deaths reported in the National Death System was compared with the baseline deaths. The excess of deaths reported was estimated by “Simple Difference method”.

Results:

The research outcomes showed that the excess of total deaths, from 1st March to 31th may, 2020 is 2.24 times greater than the oficial number of deaths reported by COVID-19.

Conclusion:

The finded differences may be associated directly with a unregistered deaths by COVID-19 and another general death causes related with failures in our Public Health Sistem during the Pandemic period.

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