Covid-19 killed almost 70,000 French people in 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which made it the third leading cause of death behind cancer and cardiovascular disease, shows a study published Tuesday, December 13 by health authorities.
"
With around 69,000 deaths, Covid-19 is the third cause of death in France in 2020, behind tumors and diseases of the circulatory
system", summarizes this work, carried out by the Public Health Agency France, the statistical department health and social ministries (DREES) and Inserm.
A tenth of French people who died in 2020 died of Covid-19 (10.4%), where more than a quarter (25.6%) succumbed to tumors and around a fifth (20.2%) to cardio-neurovascular diseases.
As in most other countries, Covid-19 arrived in France at the start of 2020 and proved to be particularly deadly in certain categories of people, first and foremost the oldest.
Just over half of the victims of a Sras-Cov-2 infection in 2020 were aged 85 or over, the men who died from Covid were on average younger than the women.
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The figures in the study, compiled on the basis of death certificates drawn up that year, reflect a situation in which mortality had not yet been greatly reduced by the arrival of vaccines.
They also testify to a decline in deaths linked to a cause other than Covid (respiratory, infectious diseases, road accidents).
Some sick or frail people, who would have died that year from the main fatal pathologies, may have died from Covid instead, by a possible “
competitive
” effect, according to the authors of the study.
The various measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus may also have had an effect on the drop in non-Covid deaths.
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These measures notably included several confinements, one of which, particularly drastic, lasted from March to May 2020. There was probably "
a protective effect, in particular against respiratory and infectious diseases and transport accidents, linked to the measures of prevention that have accompanied the health crisis
”, say the authors.
"
However, other mortality impacts of this outbreak and its longer-term context cannot be ruled out, which calls for continued regular surveillance across all causes of death
," the authors conclude.
