Excess mortality data are important in understanding the total impact of COVID-19 in developing countries, which may undercount deaths due to lower COVID-19 testing capacity. Thailand was the first country outside the People's Republic of China to report a COVID-19 infection in January 2020, and it has experienced three waves of the pandemic to date. To account for deaths directly and indirectly caused by the disease, we used mixed-effects models to estimate deaths from January 2020 to June 2021 under the scenario where the pandemic did not occur. The difference between these counterfactual deaths and the actual recorded deaths is our estimate of excess mortality due to COVID-19. Our results suggest that excess deaths due to the pandemic were much higher than official number of deaths attributed to the disease. There is also considerable variation across provinces. Excess deaths are higher for those aged 65 years and older and for males. The results can inform policies and intervention programs targeted at minimizing the adverse socioeconomic impact of COVID-19.

JEL codes: C1, I1