Mortality in NL continues to rise

In the week from March 30 to April 5 an estimated 5,100 people in the Netherlands died, around 2 thousand more that the weekly average for the first 10 weeks of 2020, Statistics Netherlands said on Friday. The number of deaths among elderly people in particular increased.

The stats office based this estimate on the number of reports of deaths it received so far for the 14th week of 2020. In the first 10 weeks of the year, up until March 8, an average of 3,132 people died per week, slightly less than the same period in 2019. The increase in deaths coincides with the outbreak of the coronavirus epidemic in the Netherlands, the stats office said.

The first Covid-19 diagnosis in the Netherlands happened on February 27. The first coronavirus death happened on March 6. And on March 11, the World Health Organization declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic.

The number of people who died over the course of week 14 in Noord-Brabant and Limburg, two provinces hit hard by the Covid-19 outbreak, was more than double the average number of weekly deaths there between January 4 and March 14.

The increase in deaths was particularly noticeable among elderly people. An estimated 1,900 people aged 65 or older died in week 14 of this year, an increase of 68 percent compared to the average in the first ten weeks of 2020. In week 13, the mortality among elderly Dutch was 44 percent higher.