E-Mail A new study involving researchers from the University of Oxford and the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) has examined the change in overall and cause-specific death rates during the three months of the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020. The results are published today in The BMJ. In China, the emergence of COVID-19 was first reported during mid-December 2019 in Wuhan city, Hubei province. Coinciding with the January 2020 festivities for the Chinese Lunar New Year, the virus spread rapidly across China. This led to a national lockdown on 23 January 2020, which continued until early April. The study analysed data from official Chinese death registries for the period 1 January - 31 March 2020, and compared this with the same period over the previous five years. The researchers performed separate analyses for Wuhan city, the epicentre of the pandemic, and elsewhere in China.