It has long been discussed – and doubted, whether the corona pandemic will lead to excess mortality in Germany. The Federal Statistical Office is now presenting figures for the period from March 2020.
The corona pandemic led to an excess mortality of almost 71,000 people in Germany between March 2020 and February 2021. This is the result of the Federal Statistical Office, as it writes: “From March 2020 to mid-November 2021, more people died in Germany than would have been expected considering the demographic development. The increase in the number of deaths is not only due to the aging of the population explainable, but significantly influenced by the pandemic, “said Christoph Unger, Vice President of the Federal Statistical Office at a press conference.
A total of around 985,600 people died in Germany in 2020, five percent (46,000) more than in 2019. “Due to the aging of the population alone, an increase in the number of deaths of around two percent or around 20,000 cases would have been expected,” writes the Federal Office. At the beginning of 2021, the number of deaths would have been slightly below the average of the four previous years because of the lack of flu epidemic. However, excess mortality has increased significantly since the beginning of September 2021. “This increase presumably has several reasons and can only partly – in October 2021 only about a third – be explained by the Covid 19 deaths reported to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI),” according to the Federal Statistical Office.
Corona is the cause of death in 47,860 people
The authority also gives figures on the causes of death in 2020: “A total of 39,758 people died of Covid-19 as a basic disease and 8,102 people with Covid-19 as a concomitant disease. A total of 47,860 died in 2020 with either Covid-19 as a basic disease The main cause of death was (83 percent) or contributed to death as an accompanying illness (17 percent). 70 percent of the people who died of Covid-19 as a basic disease were 80 years or older. “
By keeping hospital beds free for corona patients, the number of hospital treatments has dropped to the level of 2006: According to the Federal Office, there were “almost 2.5 million or 13.1 percent fewer hospital treatments in 2020 than in the previous year.” The number of operations has also decreased as a result of postponements: “In 2020, 690,000 or 9.7 percent fewer patients were operated on in German hospitals than in the previous year – as few as last in 2005.”
The Federal Statistical Office specifies the number of inpatient corona patients in 2020 to be around 176,000. A good fifth of them had to be treated in the intensive care unit. 21,400 patients were artificially ventilated, for an average of almost eleven days. More than 31,600 people died with or from Covid despite being hospitalized. “Their average age was 80.3 years,” writes the Federal Statistical Office.
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Source From: Stern
