[Considerations on Excess Mortality in Germany in the year 2020 and 2021]

Abstract

At the end of 2020, in Germany a discussion broke out whether the past year was characterized by excess mortality. The opposite positions arose primarily from the way data was processed. In order to correct systematic trends of the last two decades, in the present study the annual death rates for Germany were calculated as the difference to those of the year 2000 and a polynomial fit of 2^nd order was carried out for the total population and for the groups of people below and from 80 years of age. There were high coefficients of determination with R2 = 0.965, R2 = 0.982, and R2 = 0.991, respectively. The residuals of the individual years were interpreted as under or excess mortality. For the total population there were excess mortality rates for 2020 and 2021 with 11 500 and 10 468 deaths respectively, which in which in total is completely covered by the excess mortality of those aged 80 and over. In the age group below 80 years there was no excess mortality in the two years. For all age groups, excess mortality was most prominent in the year 2003.