Hot weather in France took lives of 1,500 people in France over the past summer. This was announced on September 8 on the radio station Franceinfo by the Minister of Social Affairs and Health of the Republic Agnes Buzen.
According to Busen, during the summer heat this year, the department recorded an excess of the average mortality rate of almost 1.5 thousand deaths. Half of the dead are people over 75 years old.
The exact number of deaths, according to the French Ministry of Health, is 1,435 people. 567 deaths were recorded during the first heat wave, in late June – early July, and 858 during the second heat wave, in late July.
Busen noted that this year the abnormally hot weather that was observed in France for 18 days affected about 20 million people. The minister added that the highest mortality rate due to hot weather was recorded in 2003, when about 15 thousand people died in France.
At the end of June , during the first episode of abnormally hot weather in several regions, the air temperature was higher than 40 degrees Celsius. On June 28, in the Herault department in the south of the country, the air temperature was +48 degrees Celsius, which is an absolute temperature record for the continental part of France.
It was reported earlier that during the second wave of heat waves in Paris, on July 25, the air temperature was +40.8 degrees Celsius, which is an absolute temperature record for the French capital.