At least 12,000 excess deaths were recorded in around ten European countries at the heart of the exceptional heat wave in June, according to a compilation of national data published Thursday July 16 – a partial toll which risks increasing as statistics are reported.
Between June 22 and 28, the peak of the heatwave in several countries, around 10,000 excess deaths have already been recorded by the national institutes of seven states (Germany, France, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Luxembourg). To these calculations are added 2,200 deaths linked to the heatwave in England and Wales, according to estimates published by the British meteorological service Met Office for the wider period of June 18 to 28.
This count is partial, provisional data from the European excess mortality monitoring platform EuroMOMO (European Mortality Monitoring) also indicates a significant increase during the last week of June, with 14,260 excess deaths. This statistical model is powered by official feedback from 24 countries representing nearly 400 million inhabitants.
“Summer is not over,” warned WHO regional director for Europe, Hans Henri Kluge. “We have the tools to prevent these deaths. » Currently, “too many governments still consider heat as a meteorological event rather than a health emergency,” he added in a press release.
“Dramatic”
At this stage, this is the week of June with the highest excess mortality since the start of the harmonized EuroMOMO series in 2020, which does not cover part of Eastern Europe. All summer weeks combined for seven years, this “week 26” 2026 is preceded by only another in July 2022. At the time, Covid-19 was still circulating in certain countries.
“To our knowledge, there are no other causes for this excess mortality than heat, and it is quite dramatic,” explained Lasse Vestergaard, epidemiologist at the Danish research center Statens Serum Institut and coordinator of EuroMOMO. Lasse Vestergaard calls for caution in interpreting the latest figures, which are still provisional. For the organization, it takes four weeks for the estimates to be sufficiently consolidated.
The first national figures on excess mortality have often been increased since the end of the heat wave. These are early indications of the human consequences of increasingly frequent exceptional heat peaks. The heat wave would have been almost impossible in June without climate change, according to climatologists at World Weather Attribution.
The methods for counting the number of excess deaths, or more precisely those who died due to heat, differ between countries. For Spain, the mortality surveillance system of the National Epidemiology Center (MoMo) attributed 610 deaths to heat between June 22 and 28, almost two thirds of them among those over 85 years old.
Germany very affected
Germany experienced 5,780 more deaths in the 26th week of the year compared to the average of the previous four years, according to calculations based on figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). Compared to the previous two weeks, Destatis counted 7,100 additional deaths. According to the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany’s health authority, more people have already died from heat this summer in the country than in the previous six years.
In France, more than 2,000 additional deaths were recorded in week 26 compared to the previous one, according to Public Health France. In Belgium, the public scientific institute Sciensano recorded 753 excess deaths on the days of June 27 and 28 alone, out of 1,747 between June 18 and July 1 – a national record during a heat wave in the 21st century.
An analysis of data from the Dutch Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) shows almost 600 excess deaths in the Netherlands between June 22 and 28, and around 220 in Switzerland over the same period based on figures from the Federal Statistical Office. In Luxembourg, the Ministry of Health reported 23 excess deaths.
In a bulletin covering 54 major cities in Italy, health authorities have so far observed mortality “slightly higher” than expected only among people aged over 85 in the northern regions of the country at the end of the month. Several countries in Central and Eastern Europe, also hit by the June heatwave, have not yet published data, including Slovakia and Hungary.
