JUST IN: The number of deaths rises due to the extreme heat wave that hits Europe
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The extreme heat wave that has affected much of Europe since June 17 has left a toll of victims in several countries. The authorities of France, the United Kingdom and Germany offered this Sunday new figures of deaths associated with high temperatures, while meteorological services began to anticipate progressive relief in some areas of the continent. One thousand additional deaths in France The French authorities offered this Sunday, June 28, a first provisional balance of the victims associated with extreme heat, 11 days after the start of the wave. According to Santé Publique France, an organization dependent on the Ministry of Health, since June 24, nearly 1,000 additional deaths have been observed compared to the deaths registered in the previous months, a figure that the agency clarified is not yet consolidated and that corresponds to barely half of the phenomenon. In any case, the Minister of Health, Stéphanie Rist, declared in an interview with ‘BFMTV’ that the deaths associated with the current heat wave will probably not reach the level of those of August 2003, when an excess mortality of 15,000 people was recorded. To display this YouTube content, you must allow advertising and audience measurement cookies. Accept Manage my options An extension in your browser appears to be blocking the video player from loading. In order to view this content, you must disable it on this site. Try again Cover image: © France 24 Although the episode is comparable to that of 2003 from a meteorological point of view, the health situation will not be the same, he maintained. The Minister of the Interior, Laurent Núñez, indicated that in the last four days there were days with a 40% increase in calls to emergency services related to heat. The phenomenon mainly affects those over 65 years of age, who represent 85% of the cases, and was accompanied by a 40% increase in deaths at home. This increase, the organization specified, was more marked in the regions that were under red alert in recent days, including Isle-de-France, New Aquitaine, Brittany, Centre-Loire Valley, Normandy and Pays de la Loire. Santé Pública France asked to interpret the balance with caution, since it estimates that mortality ends up being higher due to an underestimation of the data, based solely on electronic death certificates. To display this YouTube content, you must allow advertising and audience measurement cookies. Accept Manage my options An extension in your browser appears to be blocking the video player from loading. In order to view this content, you must disable it on this site. Retry Cover image: 2026-06-26 23:08 France on alert: heat wave triggers emergency visits and increase in cardiac arrests © France 24 The French Government had warned on Saturday that the health effects of this long and intense heat wave are yet to come in the coming days. In its morning update, the Météo France agency left only two of the country’s almost 100 departments on red alert, both in the northeast. About half of the territory, however, remained on orange alert, the second most serious level, including Paris and its region. Read alsoThe world of culture, impacted by the heat wave in Europe Six deaths in the United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, six people died from last Wednesday to this Sunday, the majority while bathing in open water spaces to combat the heat, the British authorities reported this Sunday. The deaths occurred in different parts of England and Wales: a 22-year-old boy found in the River Severn, a 15-year-old teenager found in a lake near Southampton, a 69-year-old man who died at sea in Clacton, a woman whose body was found in a pond in Sandwell Valley Country Park, a 50-year-old man who died on a beach in south Wales and another teenager found in a lake in Syston. The British Meteorological Office (Met Office) indicated on Saturday that the heat wave was in remission and anticipated a progressive drop in temperatures until returning to usual levels next week. To display this YouTube content, you must allow advertising and audience measurement cookies. Accept Manage my options An extension in your browser appears to be blocking the video player from loading. In order to view this content, you must disable it on this site. Try again Cover image: Window to Europe © France24 The agency maintained the amber alert in some areas of central and eastern England until midday this Sunday, after lowering the red alert that it had activated between Wednesday and Friday in much of the country. On Friday, 37.3 degrees were measured in the town of Santon Downham, in eastern England, the highest temperature ever recorded in the month of June in the United Kingdom. The mark surpassed the provisional record of 36.7 degrees from the previous day, in an exceptional week in which the Met Office issued red alerts for the first time on three consecutive days. These deaths come just a month after at least fifteen people, mostly minors, drowned during another heat wave in May. Read alsoFrom Spain to Germany, Europe suffers a heat wave that affects more than 100 million people Temperature records in Germany In Germany, two people died in Berlin while bathing and another was reported missing in Hamburg after entering the Elbe River, in a country that has historical records for high temperatures. Public television ‘ARD’, which cited police sources, reported that two men, aged 42 and 45, were found dead in a lake in the Charlottenburg district, in the west of Berlin, and in the port of Tempelhof, in the south of the capital. A screen in Berlin, June 26, 2026, displays cautionary messages due to the heat wave hitting Germany. © Tobias Schwarz / AFP The regional radio and television ‘NDR’, for its part, summoned firefighters to report that a man was reported missing on Saturday night in the Elbe, after three people were seen in the water around 20:30 GMT. Two of them were rescued. Hamburg firefighters insisted that the river does not meet the necessary safety conditions and is not suitable for bathing. On Saturday, Germany surpassed its all-time high temperature, with 41.5 degrees measured by the German National Weather Service (DWD) in Drewitz, in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. That mark left behind the 41.3 degrees recorded on Friday in Saarbrücken, which in turn had surpassed the record in force since July 25, 2019, when the towns of Tönisvorst and Duisburg, in the west of the country, reached 41.2 degrees. To these records was added a night record: the town of Kubschütz, in the east, registered 29.4 degrees in the early hours of Sunday, the highest value ever documented in Germany during the night hours, as confirmed by the DWD to the EFE agency. Never before has there been such a high minimum at night in the country, said a spokesperson for the service, who clarified that the necessary checks must still be carried out to make the data official. With EFE
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Source: This article was originally published by France 24 – Noticias y actualidad internacional en vivo and adapted for our international English-speaking audience.
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