Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, February 1) — The country saw its highest mortality rate in 63 years in 2021, with staggering death tolls from COVID-19 and heart attacks, according to the Commission on Population and Development (PopCom).
PopCom on Tuesday said the Philippines recorded 768,504 fatalities in the first 11 months of last year, posting a mortality rate of 6.98 per thousand.
This count is higher by 154,562 than the deaths listed in all of 2020, when around 5.8 per 1,000 Filipinos died, it added.
“We are expecting more numbers from November and December of last year. We can presume that there were about 800,000 deaths or more then,” PopCom executive director Dr. Juan A. Perez III said.
By end-2021, Perez estimated a mortality rate of 7.5 or 8 per thousand — “not the highest mortality rate ever in the country, but certainly the highest number of Filipinos dying in a single year.”
He said the last time the country reached such figures were from 1958 to 1959, when there were about 7.3 to 8.4 deaths per 1,000 people. But considering the smaller population then, he noted “only 218,816 died.”
Leading causes of death
PopCom’s report showed the leading cause of death was ischemic heart disease, which killed 110,332 Filipinos from January to October 2021. The number is up from 86,164 the previous year.
COVID-19 was the second deadliest disease after being identified as the underlying cause of death for at least 75,285 people — higher than the 30,140 logged from March to December 2020.
According to Perez, the tally includes “unidentified” COVID-19 deaths, which means there was no confirmatory RT-PCR test up to the time the individual died, but laboratory tests or clinical findings by a doctor indicate infection.
The commission added that mortalities were also up for cerebrovascular disease (from 53,082 to 58,880), hypertension (from 26,079 to 32,614), and diabetes mellitus (from 32,830 to 38,584).
There was a decline in deaths from neoplasms or tumors during the January to October 2021 period (from 55,700 to 48,937). However, Perez said this doesn’t necessarily mean good news.
“The fact that neoplasms are down should not be a comforting thought, as hospitals are heavily burdened with COVID-19,” he explained. “Diagnosis of all forms of cancers may also be delayed or remain undiagnosed, leading to deaths attributed to other causes.”
The PopCom chief said the sharp rise in the number of deaths indicate a health system “severely challenged” by the pandemic.
“The challenge to the Philippine health system is both acute and unprecedented. Local health systems would need to be augmented by additional investments in health systems capacity and its resilience to respond to acute health crises,” he said.
Earlier, PopCom reported a 13% drop in adolescent pregnancies in 2020, the sharpest decline in 17 years.
