Lithuania has registered some 3,000 more deaths in 2020 than a year before. According to previous analyses in hard-hit countries like Italy, the number of so-called excess deaths may indicate more accurately the real scale of the pandemic.
“All resources are put into providing emergency help to Covid-19 patients. As a result, all planned healthcare services have been limited,” said Laimonas Griškevičius, a professor at Santara Clinics, who studied the excess deaths as part of the Evidence-Based Medicine Group in Lithuania.
“As people do not receive these services, we can assume that their chronic conditions worsen. This [pandemic] has a complex impact on the healthcare system,” he said.
The higher number of deaths may be linked to the complete suspension of health services during the first wave of the pandemic in spring and the current shortage of doctors to provide regular care, according to Griškevičius.
The average number of deaths from November 23–29 had been 700 in the past 20 years. But this year, the number rose to 1,107, according to the Evidence-Based Medicine Group.
Read more: Lithuania third in Europe by coronavirus infections
The figures were prepared by the team which also included Jonas Bačelis in Sweden, Tumas Beinortas from Cambridge University Hospital in the United Kingdom, and Aistis Šimaitis from the Lithuanian government’s Covid-19 analysis team.
Some of the deaths, albeit not linked to the coronavirus, could in fact be unidentified Covid-19 cases, according to Lithuanian Health Minister Aurelijus Veryga.
“This assumption, unfortunately, cannot be tested. It is possible that, behind some of the deaths from cardiovascular or respiratory diseases, there could be hiding a particular number of coronavirus deaths,” Veryga said.
NEW: we’ve updated our excess mortality tracker, the gold-standard measure for Covid deaths, allowing like-for-like comparisons btwn countries
— John Burn-Murdoch (@jburnmurdoch) May 6, 2020
UK had 43,000 more deaths than usual in March & April vs 22,000 reported Covid deaths at the time
Free to read: https://t.co/pSx03b2kdL pic.twitter.com/loM7I78yqc
According to previous analyses, Italy reported 90 percent more deaths between January and April than the year before.
The Province of Bergamo, which has over a million residents and was one of the worst-hit regions in Europe during the first wave, saw a five-fold increase in deaths in comparison to previous years.
Read more: Inside intensive care unit fighting Covid-19. ‘You don’t know how to help them'
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