The French Institute of Statistics recorded a significant increase in the number of deaths in July 2022. This is due to the intense heat in the summer months, reports BFMTV.
France averaged 1,750 deaths per day in July, compared with 1,610 in June. The maximum for the day was recorded on July 19 – 2,098 dead. By comparison, July 2021 saw a peak of 1,777 deaths. The 2022 figure is also 13% higher than July 2019, and in some regions – mainly in the south – the difference is 17-19%. The difference between the averages of June 2019 and 2022 is only 4%, dariknews reports.
France still remembers the worst summer in its history, when in 2003 many people, mostly the elderly, died from extreme heat. Then 133,069 people died. For comparison, in the summer of 2022, 138,522 French people died.
On the hottest days of the summer of 2022, the air temperature in France exceeded 40°C in some places. The dry, hot weather caused massive forest fires, some of which took weeks to extinguish.