Share of excess mortality during the last corona wave cannot be explained: ‘Vaccines played no role’ Inland

The investigation was carried out at the insistence of Member of Parliament Pieter Omtzigt. He was surprised at the end of last year about the growing gap between the official number of corona deaths, registered by the RIVM, and the excess mortality, which Statistics Netherlands regularly reports on. In the study, the authorities examine the death rates for the whole of 2020 and 2021.

In total, 340,000 people died during that period. That is 30,000 more than would be expected under normal circumstances: this is the so-called excess mortality. In total, doctors entered corona as the cause of death in 2020 and 2021 in 40,000 deaths, often in combination with conditions such as dementia, COPD and obesity. The presence of the virus more than fully explains the excess mortality throughout the corona period.

However, this was not the case in the last half of 2021. In that period, the excess mortality was 11,300, while corona was stated as the cause of death for just under 7,900 people. The virus therefore does not explain the entire excess mortality for that period. The difference between the two figures is particularly large in the 65-80 age group: corona explains only 61 percent of the excess mortality in this category.

Other causes of death may contribute during this period, the CBS writes. But which one exactly is unclear. There is no noticeable shift in the incidence of cancer, cardiovascular disease and nervous disorders. However, an increase is visible in the ‘other, natural causes of death’ in particular.

“We do not see any very strange developments within this group,” says CBS researcher Ruben van Gaalen. ,, It is clear that in the third big wave we have a puzzle piece left, there is remaining mortality. There are theories that mental problems played a role, or delayed care. It is quite plausible to investigate this further. At the moment we cannot prove that.”

What has already been further investigated is whether vaccines played a role in the extra mortality. No evidence for this has been found. The RIVM looked at whether people had a higher chance of dying from something other than corona in the period of eight weeks after their injection. That was not the case, on the contrary: that number was actually lower.

The national institute also investigated how well the vaccines protected against death from corona. That protection turned out to be very high. The chance of dying from corona in the two months after the basic vaccination was more than 90 percent lower than for non-vaccinated people. After seven to eight months, that protection had dropped to about 80 percent in most groups. It got better after the booster shot.

It was the first time that RIVM was able to investigate this, says epidemiologist Brechje de Gier. “Previously, we only looked at protection against hospitalization. Now we have linked the data on the vaccination status of people on an individual level to the basic administration and causes of death figures from Statistics Netherlands, which gave us a very good insight at the population level.”

In isolated cases, doctors suspected a link between vaccination and death. Of the 166,000 cause of death statements that CBS examined in 2021, doctors stated on 162 forms that vaccination may have contributed to the death. In 11 cases, doctors wrote that the vaccination may have been the starting point of ‘the causal chain’.

In the Netherlands, side effects center Lareb is investigating deaths from vaccines. Until February 18 of this year, Lareb counted three patients who almost certainly died of thrombosis and low platelet counts after the AstraZeneca vaccine. In addition, there were two reports of patients with this picture, where it was not clear whether the thrombosis was a side effect of the vaccine. Three people have also died after an inflammation of the heart muscle or the pericardium after the Pfizer vaccination. Infections and/or other heart conditions may also have played a role in these reports, Lareb writes.

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