The cemetery at Slávičie údolie (source: Sme)
More people died in 2020 than the average annual number leading up to 2021. The pandemic weighed in heavily to the increase the numbers, according to the Statistics Office.
In 2020, the overall number of deaths was 59,000, 5,500 more than the annual average of the five years before, or a 10.2 percent increase in mortality. This is the second-highest annual mortality figure recorded in the country since the Second World War, the TASR newswire reported, citing the data of the Statistics Office.
That figure comes from 1945, the last year of World War 2, in which there was a recorded death toll of 67,500 fatalities. Before 1945, the year 1927 was also grim, with 59,000 recorded casualties.
In 2020, most people died in December, when the second pandemic wave started affecting the daily death toll. By the end of the year, the coronavirus death toll in the country reached 2,250, compared to 898 coronavirus deaths recorded as of December 1, 2020. Since the end of the year, dozens of people have been reported to have died of the coronavirus every day in Slovakia.
The increase of annual mortality by over 10 percent was caused by the fact that between October and the end of 2020 a larger number of deaths was reported compared to the fairly average monthly mortality rate observed until September, the director of the population statistics department at the Statistics Office, Zuzana Podmanická, commented, as reported by TASR.
The death toll for December was 58 percent higher compared to other months, and in the case of seniors, it was over 70 percent higher. Preliminary data suggest a death toll of 7,282 people for December 2020, with the most affected demographic being seniors between the ages of 65 and 74.
In 2020, there was a 15 percent higher reported casualty rate for seniors aged 65 and above in Slovakia compared to previous years.
People over the age of 65 have for a long time formed three-quarters of Slovakia’s annual casualties, but in November and December 2020, these numbers rose to 80 percent.
The Trenčín and Prešov regions saw the largest increase in mortality rate nationwide. The Bratislava and Banská Bystrica regions saw the lowest rise in casualties throughout 2020.
