More people died than expected in March, just no excess mortality | Interior

The Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) only speaks of excess mortality if a lot more people die than was expected for that period. That was often the case last year. Only at the beginning of the year, a week in May and a week in September, there was no excess mortality.

Since the second half of January of this year, the number of deaths has been so low that there has been no excess mortality since then. About 18,000 people died in March. The number of deaths had increased in all age groups, but the numbers were still just within the ‘usual fluctuations’ that the statistics office takes into account.

There is not yet an exact explanation for the many months of excess mortality that occurred last year. Part of this can be explained by the corona pandemic and the flu, but the government wants to conduct further research into the mortality rates during the pandemic.

Due to the low number of corona infections, Statistics Netherlands will from now on publish news reports about the mortality figures per quarter. The next post will cover the second quarter of this year and is scheduled for July.