Credit: STATEC

The national statistics institution STATEC  has counted 397 total deaths among Luxembourg residents for the month of April 2020.

Between January and mid-March, mortality in the year 2020 followed previous trends. Luxembourg, like many other countries, experiences lower mortality over time. This lower mortality is mainly due to a particularly mild winter which did not experience any real flu episodes. This was particularly true for the month of February and the first half of March. From 9 April, however, STATEC observed a higher number of cumulative deaths compared to the previous year, although this remained lower than the number of deaths observed in 2018.

Between mid-March and the end of April 2020, STATEC counted 664 deaths from the National Register of Natural Persons, which corresponds to over 100 additional deaths compared to the two previous years (554 deaths for this period in 2018 and 2019). This additional number of deaths is mainly due to COVID-19-related deaths (92 deaths observed during this period). For the first four months of 2020, the mortality rate was thus 2.4 ‰, which corresponds to the rate observed for the same period in 2019 ( 2.6 ‰ in 2018). 

In Luxembourg, there was a moderate excess mortality between 23 and 29 March and a very high excess mortality between 6 and 12 April. For the other weeks, there was no excess mortality compared to the reference period. The excess mortality observed in Luxembourg has been therefore relatively limited, especially in comparison with certain other European countries.

Nevertheless, April 2020 saw 397 deaths, all causes included, among Luxembourg's resident population. According to STATEC, this figure is higher than that recorded in previous years, with an increase of 21.4% compared to recent years (327 deaths in 2018 and 2019 respectively). A comparable number of deaths has not been recorded since April 1975, which also saw 397 deaths.

Between mid-March and the end of April 2020, there were almost as many deaths among men and women (50.3% were women). However, excess mortality was more common among men. The average age of people who died in April 2020 was 81.9 years for women and 75.0 years for men. This average age was slightly higher among men compared to April 2018 and 2019 (73.7 years) while for women there was hardly any difference.

The average age of people who died of coronavirus in Luxembourg is 83.0 years. That of people who died in April 2020 (all sexes and causes combined) was 78.6 years, which confirms that the lethality of COVID-19 is higher in people aged 80 and over, concluded STATEC.