During the fourth corona wave, thousands more people died in Bavaria than usual. At the end of November and beginning of December, there were sometimes over 1,000 deaths per week more than the average (median) of the four years before, according to figures from the Federal Statistical Office. From October onwards, these figures show a significant increase in the number of deaths per week. For the period from the beginning of November to mid-December, the authority consistently reports death numbers that are several hundred higher than the values of the four previous years. The highest difference was in calendar week 48 with a total of 3699 deaths – 1094 more than the median value.
According to preliminary figures, a total of 32,041 people died in Bavaria in calendar weeks 40 to 49 – i.e. from October 4 to December 12, 2021. That’s a good 6,500 more than the median values for these weeks from previous years. The statistics see a direct connection with Corona in 3269 deaths. Nationwide, the Federal Statistical Office also shows significantly more deaths than the average of previous years. Here the difference is even in the tens of thousands.
Scientists from the Covid-19 data analysis group CODAG at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich have also calculated a significant excess mortality in the delta wave for Bavaria. In a report published on Friday, they come up with weekly excess mortality of up to 30 percent during this period, about half of which, according to the researchers, can be explained by deaths with Covid-19.
In two other federal states, even more people died
However, Bavaria is less affected than Saxony and Thuringia, for which they calculated maximum excess mortality of 60 and 50 percent respectively. However, the researchers used a slightly different comparison period from 2016 to 2019.
Already in the second corona wave in 2020 there was a Germany-wide “excess mortality”, as the statisticians call an unusually high number of deaths. However, this had returned to normal over the course of the year until there was another noticeable increase in the autumn. In the course of December 2021, the number of infections in Bavaria – and accordingly the number of deaths – fell sharply again. Since December 30, with the Omicron variant declared for the fifth wave, the number of infections has been climbing again rapidly.
According to the weekly report of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Omicron is now also the dominant virus variant in Bavaria. In the intensive care units of the hospitals, however, the number of patients has recently fallen further. On Friday there were less than half as many corona patients as at the peak of the delta wave.
The Federal Statistical Office gives the median of the corresponding calendar weeks from 2017 to 2020 as a comparative value for the current number of deaths. The median is formed from a set of numbers, half of which are higher and the other half lower. This mean is less sensitive to distortions caused by individual extreme values than the average that is otherwise often used. For example, given the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 1000, the median would be 5, but the average would be around 115.1.