Professor David Bishai, director of HKU’s school of public health, who led the yet-to-be-published study, said such deaths could have been prevented if the city had put plans in place to mitigate the impact of high temperatures. “You can actually save lives if you do better heat health action planning. These are preventable deaths,” he said.
The researchers calculated the number of excess deaths using a methodology model from a past study that looked at possible links between fatalities and different temperatures, with the team finding about 93 extra deaths had occurred during each heatwave. The latest study defines a heatwave as a period of time where the daily mean temperature reaches 30.6 degrees Celsius (87.
1 Fahrenheit) or higher. The team would then check for any excess deaths over the subsequent 20-day period. The team also specified that the first day of a heatwave and the last day of a studied period should be at least 20 days apart.
Researchers used publicly available data from the Observatory to calculate that the city recorded one to two heatwaves annually between 2014 and 2022, followed by three in 2023, bringing the total to 18. They also found that a higher number of excess deaths were recorded among people aged 60 to 84 compared with other age groups. Bishai said that while the team had not investigated whether the deaths covered under the projection were directly related to high temperatures, he noted that people’s bodies generally experienced more st.