According to data available so far from death reports, 139,600 people died in the Czech Republic last year. This is the highest annual number of deaths in the Czech Republic’s post-war history, and over 10,000 more deaths than the first pandemic year in 2020. Photo credit: Freepik
Czech Republic, Feb 7 (BD) – “After a 15 percent increase in the number of deaths in 2020, the number of deaths increased by another 8 percent year-on-year in 2021. A total of 139,600 Czechs died during the last calendar year, which is the most since the end of World War II,” said Marek Rojíček, Chairman of the Czech Statistical Office. The highest number of deaths occurred in the first quarter of 2021. The monthly number of deaths peaked in March (16,800), the second highest was in January (16,200), and the third in February (13,800). In these months, 39-63% more people died than the average for the last five years before the Covid-19 pandemic (2015-2019). However, the numbers of deaths at the end of the year were also significantly above average in November (12,700, 43% above average) and December (13,700, 42% above average).
The period of high mortality in 2021 was significantly longer than in 2020, which is also reflected in the daily numbers of deaths. While in 2020 there were 89 days when the number of deaths was at least a quarter higher than the 2015–2019 average, in 2021 there were 168. The most deaths in a single day was on March 15th, when 619 people died. The wave of increased mortality at the end of the year peaked slightly lower, with 535 deaths on December 1st.
The lethal effect of the pandemic was more pronounced in men, where the number of deaths increased by 10%, compared to 6% for women. This has widened the difference in life expectancy between women and men. The life expectancy in men has declined by over a year, and in women by 0.8 of a year.
