In total, 1,468 people died of coronavirus in the third quarter of last year, taking the total number of Covid deaths up to the end of September 2022 to 46,278, according to figures from national statistics agency CBS.

The figures come from an analysis of causes of death by the CBS, which looks at death certificates rather than coronavirus registrations. The official death toll is 22,992, but this only includes people whose coronavirus infection was officially listed.

In total, 170,000 people died last year, 14,500 more than statisticians had expected.

The excess death figure is down on 2021 and 2020, when the Netherlands was in the grip of the pandemic but still well above that in years in which there was a serious flu epidemic, such as 2015 and 2018, the CBS said.

Around two-thirds of the unexpected deaths in the third quarter were among people over the age of 80, many of whom were in residential care.

Several teams of researchers are currently trying to establish what has caused the high number of excess deaths over the past three years of the pandemic.

Hypotheses including the delay in treating some illnesses because hospitals were too full, the failure to get treatment at all and the pressure that healthcare workers were operating under.