Mortality in the Czech Republic for the first six weeks of this years rose by 46 percent as against the average in the same period in 2015-2019 mostly due to the coronavirus epidemic, demographer Dagmar Dzurova said today. COVID-19 is behind more than 90 percent of the excessive number of deaths, said Dzurova, from the Faculty of Science's Social Demography Chair of the Prague-seated Charles University.