Above average mortality in Germany
Lisa Weidner studied German and sociology and completed several journalistic internships. She is a volunteer at Hubert Burda Media Verlag and writes for the "Meine Familie und Ich" magazine and on nutrition and health topics.
More about the experts All content is checked by medical journalists.
How does the coronavirus affect the number of deaths in Germany? Preliminary figures through mid-April suggest more deaths. Medical statisticians warn against jumping to conclusions.
According to the Federal Statistical Office, an above-average number of people died in Germany during the corona pandemic. This emerges from a special evaluation published in Wiesbaden on Friday. For the more recent data, the statisticians use the death reports from the registry offices. In doing so, they are currently taking data up to April 12th into account.
Accordingly, the number of deaths in Germany since March 23rd has been "above the average of the respective calendar weeks from 2016 to 2019". In the last week of March, at least 19,385 people died between March 30 and 05.April at least 20,207 and between April 6th and 12th at least 19,872.
Death numbers usually decrease during this time of year
In comparison, almost 2000 people died in the last week for which data are available, or eleven percent more than the four-year average for this week. If you compare individual years, there were 18 percent more deaths between April 6 and 12 than in 2017 and four percent more than in 2018.
"The current development is noticeable because the death rate at this time of year usually decreases from week to week due to the end of the flu wave," judge the statisticians. "This indicates an excess mortality related to the Covid-19 pandemic."
In a country comparison: excess mortality in Germany is still low
"In a European comparison, the extent of excess mortality in Germany is so far low," calculates the Federal Statistical Office. Belgium, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland and Spain have "in some cases significantly higher death rates compared to the average of previous years". There are therefore no noticeable changes only in Norway and the Czech Republic.
Tim Friede, head of the Institute for Medical Statistics at the University Medical Center Göttingen, considers the meaningfulness of such weekly comparisons to be limited. In general, there is "a high variance" in the number of deaths, said Friede to the German press agency. Even if the numbers have been higher since the beginning of the Corona crisis, they are "well below the maximums of other years. The mortality figures are within the framework of what we have also seen in recent years."
It is not possible to use the numbers to evaluate the measures taken to contain the pandemic. "That would only be possible in the long term after several lockdown and relaxation phases." However, the first indications can be drawn from the international comparison. This clearly shows "that, in contrast to other countries, the mortality figures in Germany have not gone through the roof."
No information on causes of death possible
In the current discussion, cause and effect are sometimes reversed: If the number of deaths is low, this is probably the result of the measures taken - but by no means an argument that the measures were unnecessary. "The question of causality is difficult anyway," said Friede: The figures now available do not give any information on the cause of death and "I don't know how this could be properly mapped out in a timely manner".
As a lesson from the corona pandemic, the Federal Statistical Office wants to deliver crisis-relevant data more quickly in the future, as President Georg Thiel said of the "Frankfurter Rundschau" (Friday). "We need monthly and quarterly data, older statistics are simply not suitable for crisis management," said Thiel. "We'll tackle that. We want to be able to provide data that is urgently needed in crisis situations more quickly in the future." (lw / dpa)
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