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An assessment of deaths by the EU statistical authority Eurostat shows once again: Compared to other countries, Germany weathered the first wave of the corona pandemic relatively lightly. But even in this country there was an excess of mortality in the spring.
During the first corona wave, 168,000 more deaths than usual were recorded in the European Union from March to June, around 10,000 of them in Germany alone. These figures were presented by the EU statistical agency Eurostat in Luxembourg. The peak was recorded in week 14 from March 30 to April 5: 36,000 additional deaths.
All deaths from 26 EU countries were recorded, that is, not just people who died from or with the coronavirus. Eurostat compares the data for calendar weeks 10 to 26 with the average values for the same period from 2016 to 2019.
Statistics on causes of death will only be available in about two years, a Eurostat spokeswoman said. Only then should it be clear why an additional 10,000 deaths were recorded in Germany from March to June, but the official number of all deaths in relation to a corona infection is only given as 9789 so far. Therefore, it is not clear if this indicates a high number of unreported cases or if the treatment of other life-threatening diseases was restricted by corona measures, for example, and ultimately led to the death of those affected.
In a special evaluation of the 2020 mortality rate by the Federal Statistical Office, it is recorded that from week 13 to 18 (from March 23 to May 3) the number of deaths increased continuously and significant compared to the average for the years 2016 to 2019. In the fifteenth calendar week (April 6-12), the deviation was 14 percent higher than the four-year average. The number of Covid-19 deaths reported to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) also peaked this week, it is said.
Bergamo with 895 percent more deaths
“In the entire month of April, the number of deaths was currently around 83,700 reported cases, well above the average for previous years (+ 10%),” says the special analysis of the statistical office. Since the nineteenth calendar week (May 4-10), a decrease has been determined again. After the provisional count, the number of deaths from this point on was back in the range of the average of previous years or fluctuated. Then, in August, there was excess mortality due to a heat wave.
In Europe, Eurostat recorded the largest additional deaths from March to June in Spain, namely 48,000. Italy follows with 46,000 and France with 30,000. Bergamo, in northern Italy, which had an extremely high number of corona infections, recorded 895 percent more deaths than the average for previous years in the twelfth calendar week of March 16-23. Spain’s Segovia reported 634 percent more deaths in the thirteenth calendar week.
