According to Statistics Austria, 90,054 deaths have been reported for January 1 to December 31, 2021. This number is 8.7 percent above the five-year average before the start of the corona pandemic (2015-2019) and is therefore at a similar level to the first pandemic year 2020. Meanwhile, life expectancy remains below the pre-corona level.
In the coming weeks, however, the number of reported deaths in 2021 will increase somewhat, as the registry offices continue to report deaths from the previous year, the statistics reported on Friday. In addition, the present number does not include any deaths in the Austrian population that occurred abroad.
If the increased population and changes in the age structure are taken into account, slightly more deaths would have been expected in 2021 than in the years 2015 to 2019, even without the corona pandemic. As part of the main variant of the population forecast prepared by Statistics Austria in autumn 2019 – i.e. before the start of the pandemic – a total of 85,217 deaths were forecast for 2021.
“In 2021, more people died in Austria than on average in the last five years before the outbreak of the pandemic and also more than would have been expected due to the aging of the population: in the second year of Corona, the mortality rate was currently 8.7 percent higher the average for the years 2015 to 2019 and 5.7 percent above the number of deaths forecast for 2021 before the corona pandemic,” analyzed Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas.
Life expectancy fell noticeably
The available data now also enable a first provisional estimate of life expectancy for the year 2021. In the second year of the corona pandemic, the average life expectancy for men was 78.8 years and for women 83.8 years. Compared to the previous year, life expectancy for men fell slightly (2020: 78.9 years), while it increased slightly for women (2020: 83.7 years). However, life expectancy for both sexes is noticeably below the level before the start of the corona pandemic (2019: 79.5 years for men and 84.2 years for women).
A look at the provisional number of deaths by individual calendar week shows that a total of 1,814 people died in the last week of 2021 (52nd calendar week from December 27, 2021 to January 2, 2022). In the week before (51st calendar week from December 20th to 26th, 2021) there was a similar number of deaths with 1,836 deaths. Compared to the five-year average of the same calendar weeks in the years before the start of the corona pandemic (2015-2019), around five percent more people died in the 52nd calendar week of 2021 and eleven percent more in the 51st calendar week of 2021. Compared to the 51st and 52nd calendar weeks of the first pandemic year 2020, however, around 15 percent (calendar week 52/2020: 2,123 deaths) and 19 percent (calendar week 51/2020: 2,255 deaths) fewer people died.
The age-standardized death rate, in which the number of deaths is adjusted for the age structure of the population using a standard population, was above the average level for the same calendar week in the last five years in week 50 of 2021 (December 13 to 19, 2021). Beginning of the corona pandemic, but below the previous year’s figure, which was characterized by the second wave of the pandemic. If the age structure of Austria corresponded to the standard population of Eurostat, around 21 out of 100,000 people would have died in the 50th calendar week of 2021, while in the same calendar week of the previous year it would have been 27 people and in the years 2016 to 2019 between 18 and 20 people. Due to the increase in life expectancy and the associated declining age-standardized death rates, comparisons with years in the past are only of limited significance.
Source: Nachrichten
