France recorded an excess mortality of 95,000 deaths during the pandemic between March 2020 and December 2021, a figure however lower than the estimated balance sheet of Covid-19 because certain “fragile people would have died even without the epidemic”, according to a study by INSEE published Thursday.
To arrive at this result, the experts of the public institute determine the number of deaths “expected in the absence of an epidemic”, taking into account the increase and the aging of the population, and the downward trend in risk of death at each age. Then, they compare it to the number of deaths actually recorded, all causes combined.
In total, this calculated excess mortality reached 55,600 from March to December 2020, then 39,100 in 2021, i.e. almost 95,000 deaths in all.
“The Harvest Effect”
Over the same period, the human toll of the Covid-19 epidemic was however much heavier: from 130,000 to 146,000 people were killed by the virus, according to various estimates.
This difference is explained by the fact that some victims of Covid are “fragile” people whose demographers consider that, even without the epidemic, they would have died of another cause (diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc.). This is what specialists call the “harvest effect”.
In addition, the epidemic has also reduced other causes of death, such as road accidents, which are fewer during the confinements.