For the second consecutive year, the National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Informatics (INEGI) has released the preliminary and partial results of the Statistics of Deaths registered in Mexico. Contrary to what the SSA reports daily on deaths due to COVID-19, this information comes “… from the administrative records generated from the death certificates provided by the Civil Registry offices and the Forensic Medical Services, supplemented by death certificates. death issued by the Civil Registration and with the statistical notebooks provided by the Public Ministry agencies … ”Using these sources, it only refers to deaths from 1 January to 30 June 2021. As in the previous year, INEGI explains that the final figures will be published until October 2022. Although the data on death certificates are much more reliable than the epidemiological surveillance report, it is advisable to take these results with caution as they are preliminary. https://www.inegi.org.mx/contenidos/saladeprensa/boletines/2022/dr/dr2021.pdf.
According to INEGI, the first cause of death in the country and in 20 states of the republic in the first half of 2021 was COVID-19. It is important to mention that INEGI in the final figures for 2020 emphasized that COVID-19 was the second leading cause at national level, among heart diseases, and that it was the leading cause of death in 7 states. It took only six months from last year before the percentage of total deaths due to COVID-19 increased from 18.4% to 26%. Table No. 1 shows that COVID-19 has an increase of 7.5 percentage points, but the other nine causes, according to the Mexican list of main causes of death, do not virtually change their ratio between 2020 and 2021, although only reference is made to 559 183 deaths, equivalent to 51.5% of those registered in the whole of 2020. Of the 20 states in which COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death, in 2020 it was first in men in eight states and in total; and in five in men, women and total. They stand out in the first Aguascalientes, Baja California, Baja California Sur, Coahuila and Quintana Roo, to which CDMX, Edo is added. of Mexico and Nuevo Leon.
By comparing the deaths that occurred in 2020 and those registered in the first half of 2021, the impact caused by the ancestral variant of SARS-COV-2 in the first and second waves of the epidemic is analyzed. . According to the INEGI report, in the first semester of 2021, 110,312 additional deaths were registered than those registered during January to June 2020. It is important to emphasize that excess deaths will begin to be registered in 2020 in epidemiological week 13. For the same reason, in the first 26 weeks of 2020, 86 048 excess deaths were accumulated. In the same period of 2021, according to the report on deaths in Mexico updated on January 3, 2022 https://coronavirus.gob.mx/exceso-de-mortalidad-en-mexico/ 84% of the 110,000 excess deaths are associated with COVID-19 and the remaining 16% with other causes. However, it is convenient to wait until October to know the definitive figures of the total number of deaths caused by COVID-19 in Mexico in 2021. For now, the IHME estimates https://covid19.healthdata.org/mexico They indicate that in 2021 there were 8% (21 234) more deaths due to COVID-19 than in 2020, despite the fact that at least one dose was vaccinated against a significant part of the vulnerable population and the preventive measures more or less remained active. mitigation. The foregoing includes the effect of the Delta variant, which caused the third epidemic wave in September 2021, causing a significant number of deaths.
The impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations is shown in the following table. If the death rate by age group reported by INEGI for 2021 is divided by those observed in 2020, the excess risk of dying by age group in 2021 is obtained. The second column of the table shows the excess risk of dying from all causes of death and in the third the excess risk only of deaths caused by COVID-19 (see Table 2). All-cause mortality in the first half of 2021 is higher than in 2020 in all age groups, with the exception of those under 15 years of age. However, the risk of dying from COVID-19 is higher in all age groups. Double from 15 to 55 years, 2.5 times higher risk between 55 and 64 years and 3.5 times higher risk of dying from COVID-19 in adults 65 years and older.
We encourage INEGI to maintain interest and willingness to share preliminary information on causes of death in Mexico. It is always desirable to release the micro-data as it encourages participation in the analysis of the community interested in it, although we note that we are still far from this scenario. Hopefully INEGI retains interest in sharing preliminary reports in the future and is not just a response to times of pandemic. I am convinced that the community interested in analyzing deaths and causes of death in Mexico and the world, in addition to feeling included, will make many useful contributions to knowledge.
* The author is a professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Health Measurement Sciences and the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation
https://www.healthdata.org/about/rafael-lozano
Twitter: @DrRafaelLozano
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx