Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Germany experienced a lower mortality rate in 2020, according to a new calculation by scientists at the University Hospital Essen. The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) had previously reported a mortality rate of nearly five percent, based on the number of deaths in 2020 (982,489) compared to the average of the previous four years (934,389). This resulted in an excess mortality of 48,100 people. However, a team led by Bernd Kowall from the Institute of Medical Informatics, Biometry, and Epidemiology (IMIBE) at the University Hospital Essen disagrees with this calculation method. Kowall argues that factors such as demographic change must also be considered when calculating excess mortality.
Kowall explains that the increased life expectancy and high number of elderly people in Germany make it necessary to account for demographic changes. In 2020, there were one million more people over 80 years old than in 2016, which would have led to a higher mortality rate even without a pandemic. Therefore, Kowall and his team recalculated the excess mortality rate using their method, which takes into account the different age groups’ mortality rates. Their study, published in the journal PLOS ONE, found that there was no excess mortality in Germany in 2020, despite 34,000 Covid-19 deaths. In fact, there was a slight decrease in mortality of 2.4 percent.
The study’s authors attribute this decrease to several factors, including the absence of seasonal flu deaths due to pandemic measures and a significant reduction in traffic fatalities during the first lockdown. They also note that many people with pre-existing conditions would have died even without Covid-19. The median age of those who died from or with Covid-19 in Germany in 2020 was over 80 years old, indicating that people with underlying health conditions and advanced age have a significantly reduced life expectancy. Therefore, the authors argue that those who died from Covid-19 did not contribute to excess mortality statistically.
