Adriana santagati
07/14/2021 5:21 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 07/14/2021 5:32 PM
Argentina reached the
sad record of 100,000 deaths
from coronavirus.
And the question has been repeated many times in recent months: how many more people died from this virus?
Or, put another way,
how many would not have died without SARS-CoV-2?
For the first time, the Ministry of Health answered that question.
It did so with the study of
excess mortality in the context of a pandemic
, which analyzed last year's death statistics and that this Friday the minister, Carla Vizzotti, presented to a group of journalists.
Excess mortality is a concept in epidemiology that counts the
total number of deaths
during a crisis
, be it a pandemic, an epidemic or a catastrophe, in a given place and period.
This figure takes into account the direct and indirect deaths related to this crisis, and is located above the threshold of expected deaths according to previous periods.
In 2020, deaths were 10.6% above the expected threshold (342,341), which corresponds to
36,306 excess deaths linked to Covid
.
The study
The national director of Epidemiology, Analía Rearte, explained the methodology that was used to arrive at that number.
Based on a study design used by the World Health Organization, they took into account historical data on deaths from all causes for the period 2015-2019 to
calculate the estimated figure in an “average” year
.
On the other hand, through information from the statistics offices and civil registries of the 24 jurisdictions, they counted the monthly deaths for 2020. And finally, they confirmed the cases that died from Covid according to the records of the National Health Surveillance System ( SNVS).
The dynamics of the pandemic marked the statistics.
Between January and June, with strict quarantine and most activities restricted, deaths from all causes
fell 7.9%
compared to previous periods.
But between July and December, with the peak of the pandemic,
they soared 25.6%
.
What is not known so far is
what happened to the deaths that were not due to Covid
, that is, if there were, for example, fewer deaths from cancer or cardiovascular diseases.
Yes, due to other statistics, the decrease in deaths from vital accidents and from other respiratory viruses, which did not circulate last year, is discounted.
But the breakdown of the causes of death in 2020 will not be available until the end of 2021, when the data from all jurisdictions are consolidated in the Vital Statistics Yearbook, which is always published year overdue.
However, for the national authorities that 25.6% of the second semester is "expected and reasonable".
And they defend that these numbers show "the robustness of the information system" since almost all excess deaths
are justified by the pandemic
: "Low number of deaths not explained by Covid, 3.8% in the second semester," he says the study.
In other countries, such as Peru, Ecuador or Bolivia, the percentage of excess deaths not explained by Covid exceeds 60%.
And even in first world nations the percentage is higher, such as Spain (24.1%) and Italy (35.1%), the report reflects.
As detailed by Vizzotti, from the beginning all deaths associated with Covid were uploaded to guarantee "data transparency" and that deaths related to SARS-CoV-2 were not attributed to other causes.
This research, which the ministry team carried out by crossing different data sources, is
also a response to the international rankings
that place Argentina at the highest level of mortality from Covid in relation to its population. According to the Worldometers site, our country today
ranks 16th in deaths per million inhabitants
, surpassing the United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Spain and Chile, among others.
“It is difficult when comparing deaths per million because the notifications from the countries are totally different.
There are countries that only report serious cases, others hospital deaths and not those that occur in homes ", said Vizzotti, and insisted that" the deaths per million of a system that monitors all countries are incomparable by the systems of country registry ”.
"
It has a much greater complexity than looking at Our World in Data,
" he said, referring to another site that tracks global information related to Covid in real time.
ACE
Look also
100,000 dead, 10 stories: the faces of Covid victims
What could have been done to avoid reaching 100,000 deaths from coronavirus
