Registered deaths due to COVID-19 accounted for a total of 30.14 deaths or 4.9 percent of the total registered deaths in 2020, the Philippine Statistics Authority said Thursday.
In a statement, the PSA said that by classification, COVID-19 with virus not identified was the seventh leading cause of death in the country with 20.84 thousand cases or 3.4 percent of the total deaths in 2020.
Meanwhile, registered deaths due to COVID-19 with virus identified accounted for 9.30 thousand or 1.5 percent of the total deaths in 2020, making it the top 14 cause of death during the year.
Among the 17 regions, the National Capital Region (NCR) registered the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19 with 13.00 thousand or 43.1 percent of the total COVID-19 deaths.
CALABARZON ranked second with 7.00 thousand deaths (23.2% share), while Central Luzon came in third with 2.69 thousand deaths (8.9% share).
Other regions that registered over a thousand COVID-19 deaths were Central Visayas and Western Visayas, with 2.36 thousand (7.8% share) and 1.14 thousand (3.8% share) deaths, respectively.
On the other hand, ARMM reported the least number of registered COVID-19 deaths with only 52 or 0.2 percent of the total.
Deaths due to intentional self-harm also recorded a 57.3 percent increase from the previous year, making it the 25th leading cause of death in 2020, from rank 31 in 2019.
From the 2.81 thousand registered deaths due to intentional self-harm in 2019, it spiked to 4.42 thousand deaths in 2020.
The top three causes of death in the country in 2020 were ischaemic heart diseases, neoplasms, and cerebrovascular diseases.
Incidentally, these were also the leading causes of death in 2019. In 2020, deaths due to ischaemic heart diseases were the leading cause of death with 105.11 thousand cases or 17.1 percent of the total deaths in the country.
This was an increase of about 7.8 percent from the 97.48 thousand deaths or 15.7 percent of the total deaths in 2019.
On the other hand, neoplasms, commonly known as “cancer”, came in second with 66.18 thousand deaths (10.8% share). This showed a decrease of -3.6 percent from the previous year’s 68.66 thousand cases (11.1 %).
Cerebrovascular diseases were the third leading cause which accounted for 64.10 thousand deaths (10.5% share) of the total. Deaths due to diabetes mellitus (39.72 thousand or 6.5% share), which ranked fourth in 2020, had an annual increase of 14.9 percent.
Meanwhile, deaths due to pneumonia, which recorded 34.25 thousand cases (5.6% share) in 2020, posted a -45.4 percent decrease from 62.72 thousand cases (10.1% share) in 2019, making it the fifth leading cause of death for the year.
Most of the ten leading causes of death already exceeded their averages in the last five years (2015-2019).
Meanwhile, deaths due to pneumonia had the biggest decline, with -22.58 thousand less deaths in 2020 than its average in the past five years.
The top three causes of death in 2020 retained their respective ranks in terms of their averages in the last five years.
Registered deaths attributed to transport accidents decreased by -32.0 percent, from 12.80 thousand (2.1% share) in 2019 to 8.70 thousand (1.4% share) in 2020, pushing its rank from 11th to 17th.
Similarly, deaths due to assault decreased by -23.3 percent in 2020 (from 8.83 thousand in 2019 to 6.78 thousand in 2020), moving down its rank from 16th to 19th.
