Lithuania’s surplus of deaths is unprecedented – nothing like this has been around for at least 20 years

On Wednesday, the representative of the Department of Statistics J.Bačelis participated in the meeting of the Committee on Health Affairs of the Seimas, where he presented the mortality indicators for this year. He said the data was “green”.

“But even with such ecological data, you can see that there is an unprecedented surplus of deaths,” said J. Bačelis during the meeting.

The Department of Statistics has been monitoring changes in the number of deaths in the population over 50 years of age since 2000. The excess of fatalities is observed in certain weeks of June and August of this year and has been increasing steadily since October.

J. Bačelis assumed that the jump in deaths observed in the summer was related to the high outside temperature, which reached more than 28 degrees.

“It just came to our attention then. However, any other surplus deaths that start in mid-October or early October will obviously not be explained by the high temperatures,” said a representative from Statistics Lithuania.

Don’t think the death toll will drop

The past week saw a particularly high excess of deaths in the age group over 50.

I’ve been growing for almost nine weeks and I don’t think I’m trying to stop.

“If we had to expect 750 deaths a week, we would have around 1,150. And the trend was to grow steadily, constantly. We have been growing for almost nine weeks and I don’t think I’m trying to stop, “said J. Bačelis.

“The death toll is 60 percent – higher than historically expected. That excess death also includes all known and officially confirmed COVID-19 deaths. <...>, and also invisible victims of the pandemic ”, he added, and said that the excessive death toll is a phenomenon for all of Lithuania, not for individual counties.

“Currently, 100 more people die in Vilnius per week than they normally should,” said J. Bačelis.

Rūta Ustinavičienė, Head of the Division for Monitoring Death Cases and their Causes of the Institute of Hygiene, presented preliminary annual data on the number of deaths in the country at the committee meeting. More of them this year.

“The absolute number of deaths decreased from 2017 to 2019, in 2020 we see that it has increased. The majority of deaths are diseases of the circulatory system: each year they account for more than half of all causes of death, ”said R.Ustinavičienė.

More deaths at home

The number of people who died at home rather than in hospitals also increased this year.

By 2019, the percentage of deaths at home decreased and the percentage of deaths in the hospital increased.

“By 2019, the percentage of deaths at home decreased and the percentage of deaths in the hospital increased. In 2020, the situation will be a little different again, “said a representative of the Institute of Hygiene.

Compared with 2019, the increase in the number of deaths in 2020 was due to diseases of the circulatory system – hypertensive heart disease and cerebrovascular diseases, infectious and parasitic diseases – sepsis, malignant tumors – malignant tumors of the breast and uterine body, gastrointestinal diseases – liver fibrosis alcoholic liver disease, external causes: the effects of fire and collapse.

“421 deaths are other causes. A large part is the second type of sugar debit and COVID-19,” noted R.Ustinavičienė.

Antanas Matulas, president of the Health Affairs Committee, said that “the figures and statistics are shocking” and asked the Ministry of Health to take immediate action.

“We see that the situation is tragic, terrible. We are already seeing directions in which it is necessary to strengthen the health system, ”said conservative Paulė Kuzmickienė.

It is estimated that part of the house died from COVID-19

“Employee” Vaida Giraitytė attributed significant changes in mortality to the unavailability of treatment services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lack of availability of medical services was one of the biggest problems.

“That lack of availability of medical services was one of the biggest problems. We have cancerous diseases undiagnosed or diagnosed too late, which shows that people did not have access to medical services or tests,” he said.

The outgoing Health Minister, the “peasant” Aurelijus Veryga, noted that the number of deaths at home has increased. According to him, it should be clarified if the reason for this was not COVID-19.

“It is very important to know how many of those who died at home, because the number of deaths there has increased more, how many of them are undiagnosed COVID-19. Because if most of them are not diagnosed with COVID-19, the number of deaths it will naturally decrease and disappear after the pandemic is over. But if there are a lot of other causes of death, you need to have a strategy on how to accept those people more quickly and easily after the quarantine ends, “said A. Veryga.

Odeta Vitkūnienė, Acting Chancellor of the Ministry of Health, responded to his speech. He assured that the ministry is investigating the causes of excess death, it has hypotheses.

“To say what the reasons are, of course, we may have made those hypotheses: about the availability of services, about the invisible victims of COVDI-19 and other things, about the development of remote services. All these correlations should be explained and exposed very clearly with the scientists, and it should be offered to the population that these services should not be passive when people are not calling, but more active.

We also have groups of mobile teams, but we see that the system has not responded to the needs of patients and residents, “said O. Vitkūnienė.

The same trends abroad

Vytautas Kasiulevičius, a professor at Vilnius University Medical Faculty, who participated in the meeting, said that higher mortality is also recorded in foreign countries.

“Other countries face similar challenges <...>: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia, Austria, Belgium and Switzerland show even worse trends in excess mortality in November. Those countries have different health system structures, different rules about how the health system works, but they are experiencing the same trends. But one feature that unites them is that we are experiencing the biggest waves of COVID-19 in those countries, ”he said.

V.Kasiulevičius considered that changes in the number of deaths may be related to the fear of patients when they do not go to medical institutions, or when patients are not hospitalized, although they should be.