THE number of deaths during September in Ireland this year was almost the same as previous years, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
"Experimental analysis" of death notices found that mortality in Ireland is now "broadly in line" with what it was at this time last year, before the coronavirus crisis.
The CSO, who published their analysis on Monday, noted that excess mortality between March and September was estimated to be between 876 and 1,192 deaths.
Excess mortality refers to the number of deaths above those likely to occur under normal circumstances.
Excess mortality rates understandably spiked at the start of the pandemic, with 3,502 death notices recorded in April, compared with an average of 2,500 between 2013 and 2017.
This would represent an excess mortality rate of roughly 1,000.
However, the excess mortality figures between March and September is substantially lower than the 1,806 Covid-19 deaths officially reported to the National Public Health Emergency Team (NPHET).
This suggests that Covid-19 may not be the sole reason for many of the deaths which have been statistically attributed to the virus, and that the official death toll has been overstated - something the Health Information Quality Authority (HIQA) has suggested in the past.
In a report published in July, HIQA said that many people who were infected with Covid-19 at the time of death died "predominantly" due to other factors.
