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The first wave of Covid-19 claimed 206,000 deaths in 19 European countries, including Austria, as well as Australia and New Zealand, an international team of researchers calculated. SARS-CoV-2 itself caused 167,000 deaths, the others were victims of accompanying circumstances. In Austria, according to in the specialized magazine “Medicine of nature” According to a published study, 930 additional deaths, 668 are attributed to the new coronavirus.
Model calculations of excess mortality
Researchers at Majid Ezzati at Imperial College London (Great Britain) used 16 mathematical models to calculate how many people in these 21 countries (Austria, Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, England and Wales, Finland, France, Hungary, Italy , The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland) would normally have died, and they subtracted these numbers from the documented deaths. In this way they calculated the “excess mortality” during the first wave of the pandemic.
Killed during the first wave of the pandemic
From mid-February to the end of May, a total of 206,000 more people died in these countries than would have been expected without the pandemic, the researchers explain. This roughly corresponds to the number of lung cancer deaths in all those countries for an entire year. Of the victims, 106,000 were men and 100,000 women. Therefore, the ratio is fairly balanced overall, while many more male deaths from SARS-CoV-2 are reported.
Accompanying circumstances: medical bottlenecks, violence, drugs
The causes of indirect deaths include, for example, poor medical care for other illnesses and accidents, loss of social networks, jobs and income, crimes such as domestic violence, tobacco, alcohol and drug abuse, and poorer eating habits, according to the researchers.
If all countries are taken together, the number of additional deaths is 23 percent higher than the number of deaths that are attributed to the coronavirus, they wrote. In Spain (69 percent) and Italy (46 percent) the differences were particularly notable. This may be due in part to undetected SARS-CoV-2 infections, as well as increased mortality from other diseases, because medical care no longer works as well.
Countries affected differently
In some countries such as France, Belgium and Switzerland, the excess mortality was probably lower than the number of documented corona victims, although there were many to complain about: in France, 28,771 deaths were attributed to Covid-19, with probably 23,700 more than without it. Pandemic. In Belgium, there were 9,487 corona deaths in 8,600 additional deaths and in Switzerland 1,656 corona deaths in 1,400 additional deaths.
The lock prevents cases of flu and accidents
In Australia, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, New Zealand and Slovakia, however, there was no excess mortality or it was a maximum of five percent. In these countries, despite all corona deaths, fewer people probably died during the study period than without the pandemic. Possible explanations for this are, for example, fewer flu and other respiratory illnesses due to corona measures or fewer traffic and leisure accidents and acts of violence due to confinement.
More women died in Austria
In Austria, according to the researchers’ calculations, there were 930 additional deaths from the pandemic, two-thirds of them were women. 668 deaths during the first wave of Covid-19 were directly attributed to the coronavirus.
Statistical fuzziness
The calculations, of course, are subject to statistical uncertainties. Especially in countries that were not as affected by the virus as Austria and where the number of direct and indirect victims of the pandemic is comparatively low, the fluctuation ranges do not allow to draw reliable conclusions about whether there really was excess mortality and whether mortality occurred by the pandemic has increased significantly.
The researchers explain why there are such glaring differences between individual countries that it is difficult to tell. Many different things would probably come together here, such as the health status of the population, social conditions, the reactions of decision-makers and the state of the health system.
