Corona death toll has doubled in one month

From the beginning of the winter, the statistics of the Zug Health Directorate show that an increasing number of people have died in connection with the corona pandemic almost every day. The cantonal doctor gives the reason for this.

The death toll from the Covid-19 pandemic has recently risen sharply in the canton of Zug. While the health department's statistics on 1 December recorded 34 deaths, there were exactly twice as many, 68, on 1 January, and this number had risen to 75 by Tuesday morning.

What is the reason for this? "During the second wave, significantly more care home residents were infected than during the lockdown in the first wave and in the summer," writes the cantonal doctor Rudolf Hauri. And he adds:

"This probably has to do with the fact that there were more contacts without a lockdown and a blanket bans on visits, which increased the likelihood of transmission."

According to Hauri, the proportion of residents of old-age and nursing homes among the Corona mortalities in 2020 was 63%. From the very beginning of the pandemic, the people responsible for the old-age and nursing homes have had to permanently strike a balance between isolation in order to protect residents and facilitating contacts in order to cheer residents up. Following the tightening of the measures by the Federal Council on 22 December, some homes in the canton have adopted additional regulations.

The Herti Retirement Centre in Zug, for example, has imposed a ban on visiting relatives throughout the house from 29 December. Visitors also do not currently have access to the Bahnmatt and Martinspark retirement homes in Baar, while individual visitors can only be met in the restaurant in the Büel in Cham. All these measures are intended to prevent a further rise in the sad series of mortalities.

The word "Corona" also appears in obituaries
This has long been a source of controversy. It’s not only in Internet forums and in small circles that reference is being made to individual fates and to the relatively low number of deaths. As of Tuesday, almost 1.5% of the people infected in the canton of Zug are no longer alive. The discussion has evolved into whether someone died "of Covid-19” or "with Covid-19". And this has gone so far that some obituaries or death notices explicitly refer to an infection – or to the absence of Covid. From the beginning of the pandemic, according to Rudolf Hauri, the criteria as to whether a death is associated with Covid-19 infection has depended on the medical report. According to the definitions given on the website of the Zug Health Directorate, only those people who died "with an active Covid-19 diagnosis" are listed there as a Covid-related death.

Total deaths in canton Zug related to the Corona pandemic
Total of 75 deaths as of 5th January 2021

The so-called ‘excess-mortality’ (Übersterblichkeit) also became an issue in view of the large number of coronal deaths: this refers to deviations from the statistically expected number of deaths over a specific period. As the NZZ recently wrote, citing the Federal Statistical Office (FSO), there was a noticeable increase in the number of people who died in Switzerland in 2020, in both the risk group of people who were over 65-years of age, and in the overall group.

More deaths compared to previous years
What is the situation in the Canton of Zug? The FSO published the death toll up to Tuesday, 27 December, pointing out that these were still provisional figures. These show that a total of 843 people died in Zug last year. With the exception of 2018 (816), this is significantly more than in the comparable periods in previous years up to 2015, even taking the increase in population into account. It is also striking that, without exception, more and sometimes twice as many deaths were counted in the four weeks of December than in previous years. There is thereby an obvious link with the pandemic.

Sources: FOPH  (cases, hospital admissions, deaths, isolation/quarantine), canton (via OpenZH)  (hospital occupancy). The FOPH data often differs from those of the cantons, e.g. due to different times for the snapshot.