Nearly 7,000 more people died last December than ten-year average for Serbia

In the same month, according to the data of the Institute of Public Health ''Dr Milan Jovanović Batut,'' the number of deaths from COVID-19 was officially 1,646.

The official statistics based on monthly data in the death registers showed 17,321 deaths in December 2020, twice as many as in the same month the year before, when the number was 8,803.

In December, the average number of deaths in the previous ten years was 10,516.

The number of deaths in Serbia from April 1 to December 31, 2020, was higher by as much as 15,372 compared to the same period last year, i.e., by 13,069 ten-year average, according to RZS data.

In those eight months, the coronavirus epidemic officially claimed 3,227 lives.

The considerable increase in the number of deaths in Serbia concerning the ten-year average, pointed out by Predrag Kon, an epidemiologist and a member of the Crisis Team, last summer, cast doubt on the official records of deaths from COVID-19.

According to the president of Serbia's the Union of Doctors and Pharmacists Rade Panic, the higher number of deaths "is undoubtedly the result of an epidemic of new coronavirus," because "some patients died of COVID-19, while others also of COVID-19 but due to the lack of necessary medical care they needed."

The total number of deaths in 2020 was 114,954.