Mario Cruz / Lusa
In 2022, 124,792 people died in Portugal, a number below the 125,231 registered in 2021, considered the worst year of the pandemic. It was the second worst year ever in terms of mortality.
Last year, apart from August, September and October, more than ten thousand people died per month, according to the Morning mail. According to the diary, the first records of mortality, in 1915, point to 49,000 deaths, and in 1918 94,070 people died from the Spanish flu.
According to Newspaperwhich cites data from the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the deadliest year in Portugal was 1942, with 126,000 deaths.
“The covid-19 pandemic explains part of this worsening of mortality”, he indicated to the Morning mail epidemiologist Carmo Gomes, from the University of Lisbon.
In 2019, before the pandemic, 112,000 people died in the country. In 2020, of the 123,000 deaths registered, 6,984 occurred due to coronavirus. In 2021, covid-19 was responsible for 11,990 deaths and in 2022 for 6,800.
As for days, the deadliest of 2022 was December 12 with 470 deaths. July 14 follows, with 459 deaths. The month of December last year registered the most deaths, with 12,197. The year 2022 is also the third consecutive year in which deaths are above 120 thousand.
“Death from other diseases is indirectly associated with covid-19, which affects a wide variety of organs”, indicated Carmo Gomes, adding that “there is a growing line of deaths, which emerged long before the pandemic and is associated with ageing population”.
The epidemiologist alerted to the new variants. Although mortality from the coronavirus is expected to decrease in the coming months due to the fact that “about 75% of the population is immunized by the vaccine against the pandemic or by having had the infection”, this “trend could be compromised if it is verified that the appearance of a new one most contagious and aggressive variant of covid-19 for the elderly”.
To PublicCarlos Antunes, researcher at the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, said that “everything indicates that we will not have more years below the level of 120 thousand deaths”.
“For each year we have an average of more 50 thousand people over 65 years old and, as 4.2% of people in this age group die, there are about two thousand more deaths per year”, underlined the specialist.
Raquel Duarte, the pulmonologist who led the team of experts who advised the Government in defining measures to combat the pandemic, considers that it is necessary to “understand the causes behind this excess mortality”.
“We need to know whether it is associated with social and economic determinants, whether it is due to a spike in infectious diseases, delays in diagnoses… Only by analyzing the causes can we define the appropriate strategies. And it is important to understand how many of these deaths would be preventable”, he added.
It is, in the expert’s opinion, “a multifactorial phenomenon. Aging is an important factor but we cannot stop there”.
The Ministry of Health has announced a study on mortality in Portugal, with no results yet known.
Questioned on this matter, the Deputy Director-General of Health, Rui Portugal, said that the study is being conducted by the National Institute of Health Doutor Ricardo Jorge (Insa), but neither this body nor the Ministry of Health responded to requests for clarification from the Public.
During a recent hearing in Parliament, the Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, only advanced that the Directorate-General for Health and Insa were preparing a “public model of mortality analysis at national level in the last two years, with the participation of foreign experts”.
Taísa Pagno // 
