A study published this Tuesday by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) indicates that around 70,000 people could have died across Europe in 2022 due to extreme heat.
In a statement, ISGlobal explains that the research, published in the journal The Lancet Regional Health-Europe, revises upwards the estimates made so far on the deaths associated with the temperatures recorded last summer on the European continent, which reached new highs.
The authors acknowledge that, in a study previously published in the journal Nature Medicine, the methodology used, based on weekly temperature averages, underestimated mortality attributed to heat, since daily data are needed to accurately estimate the impact of peaks of temperature. extreme temperatures.
Published in July, this first investigation estimates the deaths of 62,800 people last year.
The researchers have now applied a comprehensive analysis of the data, collecting daily temperature and mortality series in 147 regions in 16 European countries between 1998 and 2004, and then comparing heat- and cold-related mortality estimates at different classification levels: weeks, fortnights and months. .
The data revealed differences in epidemiological estimates depending on the classification time scale and confirmed that summarizing daily data for periods longer than one day underestimates the impact of temperatures on mortality.
Specifically for the period between 1998 and 2004, the daily data model estimated mortality related to cold and heat at 290,104 and 39,434 premature deaths, respectively, while the weekly model presented values of 8.56% and 21. 56% lower for these two estimates.
Source: TSF
