Philippines Population Vital Statistics and Cause of Death for Jan - September 2022 as of 31st October 2022, Released on 23 Jan 2023. Data Appears Relatively Complete for Jan - July 2022.
Philippines Population Vital Statistics and Cause of Death for Jan - September 2022 as of 31st October 2022, Released on 23 Jan 2023. Data Appears Relatively Complete for Jan - July 2022.
All-cause mortality data Jan - July is running slightly above 2019 (last normal year) levels. Registered births continue to drop currently standing at 22.8% below the same period in 2019.
PSA has released the preliminary data for registered deaths, live births and marriages for January to September 2022, as of 31 October 2022 yesterday (23 Jan 2023). There is not much to see. Registered deaths for 2022 from March onwards are apparently very close to the 2019 data.
As an exercise, I took the historical monthly deaths from 2015 to 2019 and used them to forecast (excel forecast tool) the expected monthly deaths for 2020 to 2022. We already know that the 2020 deaths were below forecast, and the 2021 deaths soared above it after February. The 2022 monthly deaths were above forecast only for January, and thereafter came down close to forecast levels in February and fell to the bottom bound of the forecast thereafter.
The Philippines must be one of the few heavily vaccinated nations not to be experiencing excess deaths in 2022! I am surprised that we don’t have researchers flocking here to understand the Filipino superpower that prevents excess deaths!
Birthrates for 2022 are currently only slightly lower in total (Jan to July) than 2021 (724,086 vs 728,679). However, there was a recovery in births from January to March 2022 (+31,629 birth compared to 2021), which was lost from April to July (-36,222 births vs. 2021). If the pattern of dropping births continues for the rest of the year, the overall births for 2022 will be lower than those of 2021, showing a continuation of the large drop in births that started in 2020.
Preliminary Cause of Death data for the same period has also been released. Aside from Covid-19 attributed deaths being high in 2021, but not 2022, the leading causes of deaths were Ischaemic Heart Disease, Cerebrovascular Disease, and Neoplasms.
The COD data is not useful to make any comparisons between years, as the incomplete data for January to September 2022 is compared with the complete though preliminary data for 2021. Further, 2021 has very high excess deaths. I will compare the January to July COD against historical COD for 2019 to 2020 in a separate article later this week.
In summary, the vital statistics provided to date are delayed compared to the rate of data releases in 2021; only data up to September 2022, as of October 2022 have now been released at the end of January 2023.
The data is not convincing (for registered deaths which seem to be almost miraculously following 2019 patterns and low range forecast levels after February 2022), or reassuring (for registered live births, which appear to be dropping).
There are many media reports and social media reports of unexpected deaths, even here in Philippines. There are also talks of many premature babies, some still births, many women unable to fall or stay pregnant in my social networks. Excess deaths, and considerably reduced births do not yet appear to be reflected on the 2022 data to date.
Timely release of complete data could clarify the picture! Perhaps PSA are busy with other projects! I am being optimistic that data is not being withheld, that there are good reasons for delayed data release, but I will not hold my breath!