Bulgaria had the highest excess mortality rate in the European Union in April 2021, 76 percent compared to an EU average of 20.9 percent, according to figures released on June 16 by the bloc’s statistics agency Eurostat.
Excessive mortality refers to the number of deaths of all causes measured during a crisis, above what can be observed under “normal” conditions. The over-mortality indicator draws attention to the extent of the health crisis by providing a comprehensive comparison of additional deaths among European countries and enabling further analysis of the causes.
“Note that although a significant increase in excess mortality largely coincides with the Covid-19 outbreak, this indicator does not discriminate on the causes of death and does not capture differences between genders or age groups,” Eurostat said.
In January, Bulgaria’s excess mortality was below the EU average, -0.6 percent compared to 16.7 percent.
In February, Bulgaria’s excess mortality rose to 4.7 percent, still below the EU average of 5.5 percent.
In March, the excess mortality rate was 52.2 percent in Bulgaria, compared with an EU average of 9.9 percent.
Eurostat said that excess mortality in the EU began to decline in the first two months of 2021: 17 percent in January and five percent in February after as much as 40 percent in November 2020 (compared to the average for the same months 2016-2019).
However, it increased again in March (10 percent) and April 2021 (21 percent), with national interest rates from minus six percent in Portugal and minus five percent in Sweden to 66 percent in Poland and 76 percent in Bulgaria.
Between January 2020 and April 2021, the EU experienced two complete cycles of excess mortality: the first between March and May 2020 (with a peak of 25% in April) and the second between August 2020 and April 2021 (with a peak of 40% in November) , in Eurostat.
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Source: sn.dk