2023-07-11 05:59:09
The summer of 2022 was the hottest known in Europe, with heat waves that exceeded all recorded records. High temperatures that were to blame for 61,672 deaths on the continent, where Italy was the country with the highest number of deaths, 18,010, followed by Spain (11,324) and Germany (8,173).
These are figures that emerge from a study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), in collaboration with the National Institute for Research in Health and Medicine of France (Inserm)which has published nature medicine magazine. Although the researchers point out that many countries have prevention plans for heat, they consider that they may be “insufficient”, with which deaths will increase.
A summer of record temperatures
The European statistical office already reported unusual excess mortality last summer but until now, according to ISGlobal, the fraction of mortality attributable to heat had not been quantified.
The study specifically shows that from May 30 to September 4, 2022, a total of 61,672 deaths due to heat were recorded. To do this, the researchers obtained temperature and mortality data since 2015 in 823 regions of 35 European countries, with a total population representing more than 543 million people.
With these data, they estimated epidemiological models and models to predict mortality attributable to temperatures for each region and week of the summer period.
EFE/Rafa Alcaide
Records show that temperatures were above average throughout the summer. The greatest thermal anomaly, the study indicates, was recorded during the summer heatwave, the period of the year where, statistically, the heat is strongest, which runs from mid-July to mid-August.
And this coincidence magnified, according to the researchers, mortality due to heat: there were 38,881 deaths between July 11 and August 14. Specifically, from July 18 to 24 there was a sweltering heat wave on the continent to which a total of 11,637 deaths are attributed.
Italy, the country with the most deaths due to heat
In absolute terms, Italy was the country with the highest number of deaths from high temperatures (18,010), followed by Spain (11,324) and Germany (8,173).
Italy also tops the list for heat death rate, with 295 deaths per million, followed by Greece (280), Spain (237) and Portugal (211). All of them above the European average of 114 per million.
Table of the study on the rate of deaths per million inhabitants in Europe.
And in terms of temperature, the country that registered the highest value was France, with +2.43 degrees Celsius over the average values for the period 1991-2020; followed by Switzerland (+2.30ºC), Italy (+2.28ºC), Hungary (+2.13ºC) and Spain (+2.11ºC).
Older women, the most affected
The work published in Nature Medicine also analyzed the data by sex and age and showed that the most affected were older people and especially women.
In fact, premature mortality attributable to heat was 63% higher in women than in menwith a total of 35,406 premature deaths (145 per million) compared to the estimated 21,667 in men (93 per million).
The most vulnerable are those over 80 years of age., where the mortality rate is 27% higher than that of men. However, the male mortality rate is 41% higher in those under 65 years of age, and 13% higher between 65 and 79 years of age.
Overall, there were 4,822 deaths among those under 65 years of age, 9,226 deaths between 65 and 79 years of age, and 36,848 among those over 79 years of age.
The summer of 2003, the deadliest
So far, the summer with the most deaths in Europe is 2003, with excess deaths of more than 70,000, indicates ISGlobal.
That summer, according the first author of the study and ISGlobal researcher, John Ballesterwas an “exceptionally rare phenomenon, even when taking into account the anthropogenic warming observed up to then”.
Ballester assures that what happened then revealed the lack of prevention plans and “the fragility of health systems to deal with weather-related emergencies.” Something, the researcher points out, that “to a certain extent they tried to correct in subsequent years.”
However, the researcher considers that the temperatures of last summer cannot be considered exceptional since they could have been predicted in view of the series of temperatures of previous years, “which show that warming has accelerated over the last decade.”
insufficient measures
For his part, the Inserm and ISGlobal researcher and last author of the study, Hicham Achebackmaintains that the fact that more than 61,600 people in Europe died from heat in the summer of 2022 despite the fact that, unlike in 2003, many countries already had active prevention plans, “suggests that the strategies we have in today may still be insufficient”.
“The acceleration of warming observed in the last ten years underlines the urgent need to substantially reassess and strengthen prevention plans, paying special attention to the differences between European countries and regions, as well as the age and sex gaps, which currently they mark the differences in vulnerability to heat”, affirms Acheback.
He ISGlobal It stresses that Europe is the continent in which the greatest warming is being recorded: up to one degree more than the global average.
And the estimates made by the researchers suggest that, in the absence of an effective adaptive response, the continent will face an average of more than 68,000 premature deaths each summer by 2030 and more than 94,000 by 2040.
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