The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on burden of global injuries: a counterfactual modeling

Popul Health Metr. 2026 May 4;24(1):33. doi: 10.1186/s12963-025-00403-y.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The global burden of injury is a key indicator for assessing public health and medical needs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this burden was impacted. This study aims to explore how the pandemic influenced the injury burden globally and regionally, and provide recommendations to relieve this burden.

METHODS: The burden of injury-related data is derived from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2021 Study. Autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and ARIMA-Long short-Term Memory (LSTM) models were adopted for counterfactual inference to predict the scenario without the pandemic.

RESULTS: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the observed global age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) of injury exceeded the predicted value by 107.31 per 100,000, and the observed age-standardized prevalence rate (ASPR) was higher than the predicted value by 102.81 per 100,000. Self-harm and interpersonal violence saw the largest deviations above predicted values in Europe and parts of Asia. Specifically, Armenia’s ASIR was 7,829.33 per 100,000 higher than predicted, and its ASDR exceeded projections by 5,186.32 per 100,000. Besides, traffic injuries exceeded predicted levels most significantly in Southeast Asia, with Indonesia’s ASIR 25.48 per 100,000 higher than projected. And the observed ASIR of unintentional injuries in China was 379.61 per 100,000 higher than the predicted value.

CONCLUSION: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the global burden of injuries surpassed the predicted levels for a scenario without the pandemic in 2020-2021, especially in Europe and Asia. In addressing an epidemic, prevention and emergency measures for high-burden injury types and key populations should be strengthened based on local socio-cultural contexts.

PMID:42083002 | DOI:10.1186/s12963-025-00403-y