QCOSTARICA – Deaths associated to covid-19 displaced heart attacks in 2020, as the leading cause of death in Costa Rica.
According to data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos (INEC) – National Institute of Statistics and Censuses, 2,334 people died associated with covid-19, while 1,433 died from acute myocardial infarction the medical name for a heart attack.
In 2019, there 1,486 deaths from heart attacks in the country.
The INEC report confirms this possibility advanced by the Minister of Health, Daniel Salas, since November, as part of his explanations about the profound impact of the pandemic in the country.
In 2020, there 26,209 deaths in the country; nine out of 100 of them are associated with covid-19, the INEC reported.
Olga Araya, coordinator of Demographic Statistics at INEC, explained that the country uses three codes to identify deaths associated to covid-19:
- The first, for confirmed cases of covid-19 as a cause of death;
- The second for those suspected and still under investigation;
- And third code that the country created, which is for the person who dies from covid-19 due to an epidemiological link.
Among the 2,334 deaths associated with covid-19, there were two deaths of pregnant women.
Abrupt drop in births
According to the INEC report, for 2020 there was the most significant reduction in the number of births in the last 20 years.
Last year, throughout the country, 57,848 births were registered, 6,426 less compared to 2019.
“The decrease in the global fertility rate is maintained, reaching a value of 1.4 sons and daughters per woman, a value below the level of generational replacement, which implies that not enough boys and girls are born to replace, in the structure population, his mother and father,” highlights the INEC.
The infant mortality rate (IMR) for 2020 registered a decrease of 3.1% compared to 2019, and stood at 7.99 deaths per 1,000 live births.
Other data
In absolute terms, the crude mortality rate registered 5.12 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants. A year earlier, that indicator was 4.80 deaths per 1,000.
By sex, the mortality rate was 6 deaths per 1,000 in men (5 per 1,000 in 2019), and 4 deaths per 1,000 in women the same rate that was recorded a year earlier.
Another indicator analyzed by the INEC is that of maternal mortality, which describes the total deaths of women before, during or after childbirth, per 1,000 births.
In 2020, maternal mortality registered 2.94 female deaths per 1,000 births, one more death than those registered in 2019.
The INEC also calculated the marriage rate from the marriage certificates. That rate was 3.7 marriages for every 1,000 inhabitants.
In the case of civil marriages between people of the same sex, for this period 2020, 449 were registered; of these, 264 were among men and 185 among women.
