Over 3000 corona deaths have surfaced – and the Minister of Health is silent
It has been clear since Tuesday: Over 3000 corona deaths were “forgotten” in the statistics for Austria 2021. Health Minister Johannes Rauch remained silent.
Vienna – The Austrian authorities were gone by the end of 2021, according to figures derstandard.at, from 16,439 deaths since the beginning of the pandemic, in which those affected were suffering from corona at the time of death. In Bavaria, which is roughly comparable to Austria in terms of size and structure, 11,720 deaths related to Covid-19 were registered in 2021 according to data from the Bavarian State Office for Health and Food Safety. From the beginning of the recording in the 9th calendar week of 2020 to the end of 2021, a total of 20,194 people died there with or from Corona. In percentage terms, Bavaria, which has about four more inhabitants, died, i.e. 1.54 per mille of the inhabitants, in Austria 1.84 per mille.
Corona deaths in Austria: thousands of cases “appeared” – Ministry: “Data is being imported”
However, this difference has now been added by the Austrian Federal Ministry of the Interior with a report from yesterday (April 20th), incidentally corrected even further upwards. The passage in question can be found in the middle of the text in the communication from the authority. After that, during the day, “3,412 COVID-19 deaths were reported to the Epidemiological Reporting System (EMS)”. The number of corona deaths in Austria, which had only recently decided to change its corona policy, suddenly rose to 19,851 in the relevant period; this means a proportion of 2.23 per mille of the inhabitants who died with or from Corona.
This increase of around 20.76 percent in deaths in connection with Covid-19 is assumed by the ministry to be due to a “data comparison between the cause of death statistics from Statistics Austria and the EMS”. The cases are already in the EMS, “only the death dates not previously recorded in the EMS” would now be added. The purpose of the comparison is to standardize and improve the quality of the data. The agency said the numbers would be “put into the EMS case report” later in the day.
Corona dead: government is silent, opposition states “further evidence of complete failure”
Although the government appears to be trying to explain the forgetting of the fatalities as a simple technical addendum “as part of an annual data comparison” by the ministry, so orf.at, represent, the outcry is understandably great. Federal Health Minister Johannes Rauch (Greens) and Chancellor Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) have so far not commented on the events, even when expressly asked – both by the press and by the opposition.
“Further evidence of the complete failure of the federal government in pandemic management,” is how Philip Kucher (SPÖ), member of the National Council, titled the correction of the corona death statistics. “It’s about ten deaths a day, ten fates, ten affected families that were simply forgotten by this federal government.” In the meantime, the registered data has apparently been incorporated into the publicly accessible dashboard of the Ministry of Health. However, why the late registration was so immense and to what extent this differs from the “annual data comparisons” of previous years remained uncommented. (Questions)