The number of deaths in Germany increased by 4.9 percent in 2020 compared to the previous year.
This emerges from the final analysis of the cause of death statistics by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis).
As the authority announced on Thursday, a total of 985,572 people died last year, of which 492,797 men and 492,775 women.
Destatis also attributes the increase to the corona pandemic.
Four out of a hundred deaths in the past year were directly due to the corona virus. According to the information, 39,758 people died of Covid-19 as a so-called underlying disease in 2020, in the first year of the pandemic - the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus was the main cause of death in these cases. The preliminary numbers from early July were about 9,000 cases lower. Cases in which the coronavirus as a concomitant disease was not the cause of death are not included in the current statistics. According to Destatis, these figures are expected to be published in December.
As in previous years, diseases of the cardiovascular system were by far the most common cause of death, according to Destatis.
With 338,001 deceased, they were the cause for a third (34 percent) of all deaths.
These diseases led to death, especially in the elderly: 93 percent of those affected were 65 years of age or older.
The second most common cause of death was reportedly cancer, which was responsible for almost a quarter (23.5 percent).
41,794 of all deaths (4.2 percent) were due to an unnatural cause of death such as injury or poisoning.
A fall was the cause of death in 17,211 cases.
The number of suicides in 2020 was 9,206 and thus slightly above the value in 2019 with 9041 cases.
Three quarters of those affected were men and a quarter women.
According to Destatis, the official cause of death statistics are based on the underlying illnesses and accompanying illnesses of the deceased as documented in the death certificates.