Deaths surged 29% in France during week of record heat, health agency says

Visitors shield themselves from the sun with umbrellas as they walk in the garden of the Palace of Versailles (Thibault Camus/AP)

Deaths surged by nearly a third in France during the hottest week of a record heatwave last month, the country’s public health authority has said.

At least 2,000 more deaths were reported than in the previous week when temperatures were already climbing and filling emergency wards with heat victims.

The new and still incomplete figures from Public Health France doubled its first preliminary estimate of at least 1,000 additional deaths that it gave last Sunday. That earlier estimate covered just three of the hottest days of extreme, deadly heat.

In Paris, funeral service directors said they have struggled to find places to store bodies before burial or cremation, with some mortuaries saying they were full and having to turn bodies away.

Paramedics take a patient to the emergency department of the Paris-Saclay Hospital (Christophe Ena/AP)

The updated tally of deaths from Public Health France spans the week of June 22 to June 28, during which France saw its hottest-ever days and records shattered for peak daytime and night-time temperatures in many cities and towns across the country. The heat also broke temperature records in many other parts of Europe.

Public Health France said it has counted 8,973 deaths so far for that week, cautioning that the number is still only partial. It said the preliminary total was 29% more than the 6,948 deaths registered for the previous week of June 15 to June 21, when the heatwave started.

The difference between the two sets of figures — a total so far of 2,025 — is therefore considered to be additional deaths from one week to the next, from all causes and covering all age groups, it said.

At the Paris-Saclay Hospital, patients suffering from heat exposure started arriving in a surge on June 20, Dr Nicolas Gonzales, head of the emergency department, told the Associated Press.

Doctors and nurses take care of a patient at the emergency department of the Paris-Saclay Hospital (Christophe Ena/AP)

He said they treated heat victims for heart attacks, dehydration, kidney malfunctions and other heat-related problems, from children to older people living alone.

Public Health France said there was a particularly sharp increase week-on-week in the number of deaths in private homes, with those figures up 91%. Deaths in care homes for older people increased by 37% and in hospitals by nearly 20%.

The Paris region appears to have been hit hardest, with a nearly 63% increase in deaths from one week to the next, it said.

The health agency cautioned that its tallies underestimate the true death toll, because they are based on incomplete data.

“The mortality will as a consequence be higher than these first figures,” it said.