Europe Recorded 10,000 Excess Deaths During Severe Heatwave

BRUSSELS, July 13 (Reuters) – European countries reported more than 10,000 deaths during a record-breaking heat wave that gripped the west of the continent in late June, official data showed.

The vast majority (more than 9,000) were among people aged 65 and over, according to data published by EuroMOMO, a network supported by the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control and the World Health Organization.

Extreme heat can lead to death by causing heatstroke or aggravating cardiovascular and respiratory diseases; The elderly are among the most vulnerable.

“It’s unusual to have this kind of excess at this time of year. It’s really high,” Lasse Vestergaard, chief physician at Denmark’s Statens Serum Institute, which hosts EuroMOMO, told Reuters.

“It is difficult to explain this high death rate by anything other than extreme heat,” Vestergaard added.

A heatwave at the end of June would be “almost impossible” if it weren’t for human-caused climate change, which is making heatwaves more frequent and intense, scientists said.

The data, collated from national death statistics in 27 European countries, included excess deaths from all causes, not just those related to heat, during the week of June 22-28, when the heatwave peaked in France, Spain, Britain and other countries.

But scientists said there were no other known significant factors, such as Covid-19 outbreaks, that could have contributed to the spike of 10,650 excess deaths that week.

The same European countries’ total death rates over the previous eight weeks were below typical levels, averaging about 500 deaths per week. EuroMOMO data may be revised as more data becomes available in the coming weeks.

A heatwave at the end of June disrupted power supplies, schools closed and temperature records were broken in France, Spain and the UK.

EuroMOMO does not publish excess deaths by country but noted that France and Belgium were the only two countries in Europe to record “very high” death rates in the last week of June.

Belgium’s excess mortality rate was the highest during any heat wave in records dating back to 2000, according to Sciensano, the country’s public health institute.

A separate scientific study published on Monday estimates that 2,700 people died from heat-related causes in England and Wales alone during the May and June heatwaves.

42 percent of these deaths were caused by the extra heat that global warming contributes to heatwaves, according to findings from Imperial College London, the UK Met Office and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. (Reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Andrew Heavens)