Hundreds in Spain may have died from record heat, agency warns

More than 200 people may have died in Spain in recent days as a result of the record heat wave that has gripped much of Europe this week, according to data from a national monitoring system that estimates excess deaths.

Researchers at Spain’s leading public health agency in Madrid, using models based on a decade of mortality records, and temperature and demographic data, projected the heat wave has caused 212 excess deaths since Sunday.

Diana Gómez, a scientist at that agency’s National Center for Epidemiology who manages the monitoring program, told the Spanish news agency EFE that the numbers are preliminary and based on statistical projections, rather than real-time records. This approach for assessing how many excess deaths over a given time period can be attributed to heat is well-established among scientists and has been published in a peer reviewed journal.

In a study published earlier this year, researchers used the monitoring system to identify 11,684 excess deaths between 2021 and 2024 that could be connected to heat.

Monday and Tuesday were the two hottest June days in the country since at least 1950, according to the Spanish meteorological agency AEMET, with temperatures in some places soaring above 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

Almost all of this week’s excess deaths were estimated to be among people age 65 and older, the data shows. Elderly people tend to have poorer blood flow and reduced ability to sweat, research shows, making their bodies less able to cool themselves.

Health experts warn that extreme heat is one of the deadliest forms of weather, especially when combined with humidity. High temperatures force the body to work overtime to maintain a healthy temperature, straining the heart and kidneys. If a person is unable to find cooling, proteins in their body will begin to break down and their organs will start to fail.

Because heat-related deaths are often attributed to more immediate causes, such as a heart attack, researchers often use excess mortality data to estimate heat wave fatalities.

For these figures, Spanish researchers project daily excess deaths across the country using a model based on a decade of mortality, demographic, weather and temperature data. They then run the same model without the temperature factor and calculate the difference between the two as the excess deaths attributable to temperature.

Dangerous heat waves in Spain have become more frequent and intense because of human-caused climate change, according to a blog post by José Ángel Núñez Mora, head of climatology at AEMET.

The average number of heat wave days in the country is increasing at a rate of 3.3 days per decade, he wrote. Hot nights — which are especially dangerous because they deny the body a chance to cool down — are becoming almost ubiquitous during the summer.

Conditions this week have been particularly extreme in France, which experienced its hottest day ever on Wednesday. Though the elderly are typically most vulnerable to high temperatures, this heat wave is exacting a brutal toll even on those who are young and in good health, authorities warned.

At least 40 people there have drowned since the start of the heat wave, Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu said Tuesday, as other officials warned some may have been seeking relief by swimming in unsupervised areas. French media also reported that three children under 5 had died while trapped inside cars in incidents that prosecutors attributed to the heat.

Meanwhile, emergency rooms have seen a threefold increase in 15- to 44-year-olds seeking care for heat illness, according to the French public health ministry.

Germany’s national water rescue organization told the state-funded broadcaster Deutsch Welle that 15 people drowned on Saturday and Sunday, making it the deadliest weekend for swimming in more than a decade.

And the Italian news organization Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata reported at least five deaths from the heat, including a 61-year-old farmer whose brother found him collapsed in his vineyard Wednesday afternoon.