“Since the end of last week, there have been constant requests for people to be able to come to a funeral home, and unfortunately, all the spaces are taken.”
Heatwaves typically cause between 1,000 and 7,000 deaths per year in France, and “this summer we may be closer to 7,000 than to 1,000”, epidemiologist Basile Chaix of French research institute INSERM told AFP.
Nicolas Revel, director general of the Paris public hospital system, has said he expected the death toll from the June heatwave to be lower than that of 2003, when 15,000 people died, but “probably” higher than an episode last year that claimed 5,700 lives.
Several Green lawmakers and senators have said the record June heatwave might have claimed about 10,000 lives.
Lecornu in parliament on Tuesday accused the Greens of spreading “false” information, calling it “scandalous”.
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Figures expected to rise
Citing preliminary figures, health officials on Sunday said they registered around 1,000 more deaths than during the same period in previous months since Wednesday last week.
Health Minister Stephanie Rist’s office said those figures were expected to rise as they were based on electronic death certificates, which “cover only about 60 percent of deaths on average”.
But the death toll should remain below that of 2003, Rist’s office added.
A toddler in the city of Marseille, a three-year-old in a Paris suburb, as well as a two-year-old and a four-year-old in the southern town of Carpentras died last week in parked cars that had overheated.
Caroline Semaille, director general of Public Health France, said that there were at least 300 more deaths than expected during the unusually early May heatwave, though they were due to all causes combined and were not necessarily linked to elevated temperatures.
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