Berlin
The pandemic is over. This cannot be deduced from the death statistics: irritatingly high numbers for months, even in January.
According to a projection, 98,632 people died in Germany in January. The Federal Statistical Office counted 13 percent more deaths than the average value for the years 2019 to 2022 this month. In January 2022, 89,440 people died.
The Wiesbaden statisticians have two explanations ready. For one, she had flu epidemic according to the influenza weekly report of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), only peaked shortly before the turn of the year. On the other hand, the number of COVID-19 deaths reached again at this time an interim maximum, according to the statisticians.
Nevertheless, the development is surprising at first glance, since the pandemic has been declared over. Also, many safeguards like that Mask requirement just lifted. Read about it: Corona: Masks are compulsory on March 1st – just not here
Excess mortality: Since September, noticeably high numbers that cannot be easily explained
Since September, the conspicuously high number of deaths has irritated many experts because they were significantly higher than the average value for the past four years. Even more: the phenomenon of excess mortality also repeated in October, November and December.
Never before since statistics were introduced in 1946 had so many people died that month. The December numbers are “extraordinarily high”, said the responsible statistician Felix zur Nieden to our editors at the time. A total of around 1.06 million people had died in 2022, 3.4 percent more than in the previous year, 111,403 cases in the last month of the year alone. also read: Excess mortality: Mystery of record death numbers in December
Excess mortality: Aging does not explain the trend
For decades, increasing numbers have been expected due to the aging of society. But only about a fifth of the increase in 2022 can, according to the statisticians, “be explained by the increasing number of older people”.
Further explanations are the consequences of surgeries and preventive check-ups postponed during the pandemic and of staff shortage called in health care. A conceivable explanation are also late effects of corona infections. It may be months before the definitive data and analysis by the scientists will provide a definitive explanation for the excess mortality.
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