Economy 4 June 2021, 5:17pm

Hungary excess mortality over 60% in March over 2019

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Hungary's Central Statistical Office (KSH) updates its mortality statistics every week, which shows that excess mortality over 2019 was over 60% in March 2021. This was the fourth revision of 14th week data, and the first time we see death figures up to week 18. Excess mortality in the first 18 weeks over 2020 was 27%.

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The KSH has revised its mortality statistics for the third time up to week 15 (April 12-18), the second time up to week 16, and it now has has data up to the 18th week (May 3-9), which show excess mortality of 26.9% compared to 2020. (See more about this in the revisions section at the bottom).

Until we have at least one revision (it's always upwardly) for the first 18 weeks, we focus on the period where the last week has been revised at least twice.

However, as previously, here's a little something on excess mortality in March (weeks 10-13) and for an 8-week period between 1 March and 25 April. You'll find a more detailed breakdown on both tables below, but notice that excess mortality in March over 2019 was over 60%.

Meanwhile, the vaccination campaign has fizzled out and in the country of about 9.8 million people, "only" about 5.5 million will be inoculated against SARS-CoV-2 in a best case scenario. With 805,000 official infections, that's not even close to the herd immunity threshold that is currently estimated at 85-90%.

There cabinet has already agreed to vaccinate adolescents between 16 and 18 years of age (about half of their 200,000-strong group have asked for a shot), but Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told public radio MR1 on Friday that no vaccination campaign for children under 16 can be expected before the autumn.

The upper section of the following tables (green header) shows data for separate weeks: the number of deaths in 2021; the weekly differences over 2020, 2019 and the average of 2015-19; and the ratios of the differences where the annual difference (for 2020, 2019 and 2015-19) is divided by the total weekly deaths of the given (base) year, not 2021. (It would have made no sense to compare 2021 to 2016-2020 because last year’s data would cause quite a distortion due to the coronavirus pandemic. Hence the comparison to 2015-19.)

The lower section (blue header) shows accumulated figures, i.e. the second week shows deaths for the second AND first weeks, the third for the 3rd, 2nd and 1st, etc. This is why the total on week 13 is the same in both tables.

Excess mortality for weeks 12 and 13 were 57% and 64%% compared to the same weeks of 2020, 78% and 77% compared to the same weeks of 2019 and 67% and 65% compared to the 2015-2019 average of the same weeks. The stats office has revised data up to the 13th week five times already.

Excess mortality in the first 18 weeks reached 26.9% over the same period of 2020.

The following tables show revisions up to week 16 between 19 May and 2 June. (Data for the 16th week have been revised twice.)

Here’s a more concise version of the above tables with a couple more charts to boot.

Although it is not in the tables, the KSH has revised the number of deaths for weeks 1 to 13 upwardly by 1,446 or 3.4% (from 42,517 on 27 April to 43,963 on 2 June).

And for the first time, here are excess mortality data for weeks 9 to 16, i.e. from 1 March to 25 April 2021. As you can see, the period between mid-March and mid-April was the deadliest relative to the same weeks of 2020, 2019 and to the 2015-19 average. This is shown also on a chart.

Excess mortality between 1 March and 25 April 2021 was 44% over 2020, 48% over 2019 and 43% over the 2015-19 average.

In this period, more than 30,000 people have died, against cc. 21,000 last year, 20, 370 in 2019 and 21,000 on average between 2015 and 2019.