A total of 111,034 deaths (all causes) were registered in Belgium between 1 January and 22 November this year, according to Het Nieuwsblad, Gazet van Antwerpen and het Belang van Limburg newspapers.
This was substantially above the annual average of 97,377 deaths registered in recent years and the difference - 13.657 – is close to the number of people who died from the novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) during the same period.
"Up to the 22nd of November, 15,522 persons succombed to COVID-19,” said biostatistician Geert Molenberghs (KU Leuven/UHasselt). "People who died as a result of a Coronavirus infection would not have died immediately in normal times.”
Of the extra 13,657 deaths, 6,719 were men and 6,938 women.
A total of 6,088 had been living in Flanders, 5,896 in Wallonia and 1,614 in Brussels. Since Flanders is the region with the largest population, there were relatively more deaths in the first 11 months of the year in the south of the country.
The Brussels Times
