Last year, far fewer Dutch people died from the consequences of the corona virus than in 2021 and 2020. This is apparent from provisional figures released by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) published on Tuesday. The coronavirus killed at least 8,227 people, compared to 19,608 the year before.
The decrease is not very surprising: thanks to vaccinations, built-up immunity from previous infections and the less dangerous Omikron variant, the corona virus is less life-threatening than when the pandemic broke out in 2020. At the beginning of last year, the government released most of the corona restrictions for this reason.
Yet there are still many deaths, says Ruben van Gaalen, demographer at CBS. Because the corona virus caused fewer and fewer deaths in the course of 2022, he expects the number to fall further this year. “In the autumn, mortality peaks were no longer due to the corona virus, but due to other causes such as the flu.”
Excess mortality
At first glance, the number of deaths due to so-called neoplasms, in almost all cases cancer, seems to remain more or less the same. But population growth and aging in themselves lead to higher mortality rates. Statistics Netherlands has therefore also taken averages, which show that the number of deaths from cancer is steadily declining.
This does not apply to many other types of ailments, such as diseases of the nervous system, respiratory problems and unnatural causes of death. Cardiovascular diseases were also a slightly more common cause of death last year.
All in all, this causes an excess mortality that researchers are currently trying to find the cause. “Our figures do not immediately reveal one cause,” says Van Gaalen. For example, the corona crisis may have made patients more vulnerable to other diseases, or delayed care may have resulted in health complaints being treated later.
One cause of death has risen remarkably fast in recent years, says Van Gaalen. It concerns ‘accidental falls’, for example people falling down the stairs. In 2010 this happened 2,303 times, last year it was certainly 6,254. “A long-term trend that has little to do with corona.”
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