Coronavirus: 50% more people died in Hungary in November this year than last year

In November, 15,366 people lost their lives, 52% or 5,279 more than a year earlier, the CSO reported. This is the highest monthly death rate since January 2000, caused by the peak seasonal flu pandemic at that time.

Now, the number of deaths has increased significantly in Hungary due to the second wave of the coronavirus epidemic. November’s death toll is a record, as in the 11th month of the year, the agency tallied around 10,000 deaths in recent years.

The influenza epidemic is not yet typical in November, the number of deaths in Hungary tends to increase in January-February, to a level of around 12,000 people per month. November data shows that the second wave of the coronavirus epidemic brought significantly higher death rates in the fall than a winter flu epidemic.

Mortality data for September barely showed the impact of the epidemic, but there were 15% more deaths in October than a year earlier, and the 50% figure for November indicates a very rapid fall spread of the epidemic.

In November, according to official data from koronavirus.gov.hu, fewer than 3,200 people lost their lives due to complications from the coronavirus. However, 5,000 more people died in November this year than the average for the past 5 years. Because of this, it is very likely that many more people will die from the coronavirus than the official data, or it is possible that the virus could have an adverse effect on all other care.

Therefore, there are two possible explanations for excess mortality:

1. not all coronavirus deaths are included in the official statistics (die from coronavirus but do not have a positive test, so it is not among coronavirus deaths),
2. the coronavirus loses so much health capacity that there is not enough left for other patients, so they can die of another disease (not a coronavirus).

Obviously, a combination of these is also conceivable, or someone can die by not being hospitalized with a coronavirus but with another disease, but in the meantime contracting the infection; and there may be those who do not really dare to see a doctor for fear of an epidemic. All this is not surprising, as many countries have a higher excess mortality during this period than the number of official deaths from coronavirus. The researchers explain the situation with the two previous factors and a combination of them.

In parallel with the release of the monthly data, the CSO also updated the weekly mortality data. He previously revised the number of deaths in week 46 upwards by more than 100. 3,745 people died that week. According to a recent report, the number of deaths in week 47 was slightly lower than this, but this figure will certainly change upward in the coming weeks.

The coronavirus epidemic will certainly bring very unfavorable monthly death rates in December as well. According to daily data, the spread of the coronavirus in December appears to be slowly decreasing from its peak, but the death toll remains very high (relative to the record high infection rates of a month ago). And this will also be reflected in the accumulated deaths of the next month.

Deaths related to the coronavirus epidemic could begin to decline substantially if the number of new cases per day could be significantly reduced. However, the number of new coronavirus cases per day is still around 3-4,000, implying an uncontrolled community spread of the virus. All of this is happening more than a month after the restrictive measures were introduced, just as the biggest question is how the flu epidemic will play out this year in the coming months.

Therefore, based on the morbidity and mortality of the new coronavirus, we can say that the increasingly accelerated spread of the epidemic has stopped in recent weeks, but has not been reduced to such an extent that the risk of infection is low. This, in turn, indicates that if no more substantive restrictive measures are received, we will see high mortality rates for some time.

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