Record mortality rates at the end of 2020 in Hungary

The Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH) has updated data on mortality rates. Information on the whole of 2020 is almost complete, only the last week of the year is left out (21-27 December). Between the beginning of September and the end of December last year, mortality rates were much higher: 11 696 more people died than the average of the past five years of this mentioned period.

On the 52nd week of last year, 3478 people died in Hungary.

This number is 30% higher than the average of the past five years.

It represents all deaths in the country; KSH does not specify personal cases, so it includes all those who deceased due to an illness or a car accident, were killed or committed suicide.

Compared to past years, this week, 799 more people died. This number, for now, is lower than that of covid victims reported by the operative board from the same week (879).

The coronavirus pandemic certainly increases excess mortality compared to past years. However, the simple flue at the end of the year did cause much less headache than usual, thanks to the restrictions.

On the other hand, the method of KSH does not take into consideration the pandemic. These are raw numbers independent from covid, so they always go a bit higher later, as the Office continuously updates deaths that were already reported. For instance,503 new death cases just appeared on their chart, distributed to previous weeks.

When 444.hu asked KSH on the issue last week, the Office pointed out that due to the holidays of registrars at the end of the year, numbers in the statistics will surely need to be modified. It seems like it already partly happened; mortality rates of some previous weeks have also increased.

If we look at a longer a period than just a single week,

between the beginning of September and the end of December (36-52nd week), 11 696 more people died in Hungary than the average death rate of the past 5 years.

The official number of covid victims is 8546, making the difference 3150.

We have to consider it is possible that someone died from coronavirus without being tested, or that the overwhelmed health care system was not able to tend to a patient not suffering from the virus, on a level that is expected in an ordinary situation. This could increase the number of deaths among those not infected by covid.

The big difference between the excess mortality calculated from the data of KSH and the official number of covid victims disappeared in the past couple of weeks, and numbers almost completely overlay each other. Still, a difference of 3000 is left from the whole of Autumn.

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Source: 444.hu