France recorded roughly 7,000 excess deaths during the heatwaves that struck the country this summer, Health Minister Stephanie Rist said Friday. The count covers only the period through late July.
Rist said the final data will be published in the coming weeks, Reuters reported. France's public health agency had already put excess deaths between June 17 and July 2 at 5,764, more than 36% above the level expected for that stretch of the year.
Excess deaths measure how many more people died than statistical models predicted for the same period. The method lets health agencies estimate a heatwave's toll without assigning a cause of death in each individual case.
Three heatwaves crossed France this summer, according to Reuters. One brought record temperatures in late June. Another began in late July and ran into August, lasting 23 days, matching the record for the longest heatwave in France, set in 1983.
The same conditions fed a severe fire season. The area burned across the country reached about six times the average of the past two decades.
Belgium reported about 3,000 excess deaths over the summer, Reuters reported Thursday.