Europe experienced a 50 per cent rise in excess mortality over a week in March and April due to the coronavirus outbreak, according to data released by France's Insee statistics agency on Wednesday, AFP reported.

Excess mortality is the number of deaths in a given period over and above what one would have expected to see, and is a measure widely used to estimate how many people died due to Covid-19.

Insee said Spain, Italy, Belgium and France had the highest number of excess deaths over the week from March 30 to April 6, which was “the peak of excess mortality ... linked to the COVID-19 epidemic” in Europe.

While in other years the number of deaths tends to decline in Europe in March after the annual flu season, in 2020 it rose sharply, the agency said in a report based on data collected by EU agency Eurostat from 21 national jurisdictions.

Compared to data for the years 2016 to 2019, Europe on average registered 50 percent more deaths for the week in question.

More men than women died, the data showed, and mostly people aged 70 and older.