Non-COVID-19 Deaths After Social Distancing in Norway

Lay persons and policy makers have speculated on how the imposition of social distancing to reduce SARS CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) infection has affected non-COVID-19 (coronavirus disease of 2019) deaths. No rigorous estimation of the effect appears in the scholarly literature. We use time-series methods to compare non-COVID-19 deaths observed in Norway before and during the epidemic to those expected from non-COVID-19 deaths in Sweden as well as from the history of Norwegian mortality trends. We find that in the first 6 weeks after the divergence between Swedish and Norwegian policies -- the only period for which dependable data can be had – approximately 414 fewer Norwegians died than expected.