The Netherlands suffered 2,000 more deaths than usual during the first week of April, the country’s statistics office has said. The spike suggests the Covid-19 toll might be significantly higher than officially registered.
Figures released by Statistics Netherlands (CBS) on Friday show that around 5,100 deaths were registered across the country in the week ending April 5. The number is abnormally large and exceeded expectations, which were based on an average taken of the past several years, by some 2,000 people.
Over the same period, the country’s National Institute for Public Health (RIVM) registered 881 coronavirus deaths – and the extra deaths overall in early April may also be due to the dreaded disease.
“The rising mortality rate coincides with the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis in the Netherlands,” the organization said.
In some municipalities, the weekly death toll exceeded the average twofold and even fourfold, the CBS said. The abnormally large figures alone, however, cannot conclusively show that Covid-19 is to blame, and the spike may be “coincidental and not necessarily related to the coronavirus crisis,” the statistics body noted.
So far, the Netherlands has over 23,000 confirmed coronavirus cases, including over 2,500 deaths. Worldwide, the pandemic has infected more than 1,650,000 people and killed over 100,000, the latest tally by Johns Hopkins University indicates.
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