COVID-19 ‘top 3 causes of death’ in PH for most of 2021

COVID-19 deaths now accounted for 13.8% of all registered deaths in the Philippines from January to November 2021, while the disease was the “third leading cause of death” locally when looking at the number of deaths where the virus was “confirmed,” – according to the latest data from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), Tuesday.

State statisticians divide COVID-19 deaths into two categories:

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  • COVID-19 with virus identified (67,494)
  • COVID-19 virus not identified (29,718)

“COVID-19 with virus identified was the 3rd leading cause of death in the country with 67,494 cases or 9.6 percent of the total deaths in the same period in 2021,” said PSA in a statement.

“Meanwhile, registered deaths due to COVID-19 with the virus not identified accounted for 29,718 or 4.2 percent of the total deaths from January to November 2021, making it the 8th leading cause of death.”

Top 1 and top 2 leading causes of death in the Philippines are ischemic heart diseases (125,913) and cerebrovascular diseases (68,180), compared to COVID-19 deaths where the virus was identified in third place.

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However, the study showed that 97,212 out of 704,202 deaths from January to November 2021 were related to COVID-19 when the first and second categories of coronavirus were combined-something that would place COVID-19 deaths in second place if all contradicted.

COVID-19′ top 3 causes of death’ in PH for most of 2021

“Registered deaths due to COVID-19 accounted for a total of 97,212 deaths or 13.8 percent of the total registered deaths from January to November 2021,” explained PSA.

Looking at Department of Health (DOH) data, only 39,267 died from January to November 2021.

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Despite this, the PSA clarified that their data might differ from the DOH even though they are both agencies of the same government.

“[The] figures in this release were obtained from the certificates of death, particularly the descriptions written on the medical certificate portion therein as reviewed by the health officer of the local government unit concerned,” said PSA.

“On the other hand, the figures released by the DOH were obtained through a surveillance system.”

They added that they combined the “confirmed” and “probable cases” of COVID-19 as registration.

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