In the entire month of October, more people died than expected: there was again an excess of mortality, reports the CBS. That has been the case more often in recent months.
In October, a total of nearly 1,800 people (16 percent) more than expected died, including 1,000 vulnerable people, such as residents of nursing homes or care facilities for people with disabilities.
The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) is not yet able to give the cause of the extra mortality. That will only be possible in a few months. Statistics Netherlands bases this on death certificates from doctors. So far, the statistical office can say something about the cause of deaths through the second quarter of this year.
Corona was the cause of death in 3.5 percent of deaths in that quarter. The excess mortality in those months was higher than could be explained by the virus alone. CBS researcher Ruben van Gaalen said last month that another possible reason for the excess mortality in the second quarter could be that people who contracted corona earlier and recovered, were weakened and therefore later died of something else.
Another explanation could be that people who ‘normally’ would have died in the winter, for example from an infection, continued to live because they protected themselves extra because of the pandemic. They may then die later. According to Van Gaalen, this hypothesis is difficult to prove, but “it is a pattern that we recognize from major epidemics”.
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