After reaching a record in Brazil, death records fell in 2022, compared to 2021. The number, however, did not return to levels seen in 2019, the last year before the Covid-19 pandemic.
Deaths reached 1.524 million in the year before last, a drop of 15.8% compared to 1.786 million in 2021 — 281.6 thousand fewer deaths in the records.
Of the total deaths registered in 2022, 19,968 (1.3% of that year’s total) occurred in previous years or there was no information about the year of death.
Considering age groups, there was an increase in deaths in groups from 0 to 14 years of age. The sharpest increases between the two years were in the ranges of 1 to 4 years (27.7%) and 5 to 9 years (19.3%). The reductions begin from the age of 15, and the largest were recorded in the groups of 50 to 59 years (-30.5%) and 40 to 49 years (-30.1%).
The information comes from the Civil Registry Statistics 2022 survey, released by IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) this Wednesday (27).
Among the country’s regions, the biggest drop was in the Central-West (-21.7%), and the smallest, in the Northeast (-9.3%). The states with the biggest reduction were Amazonas (-29.9%), Rondônia (-26.6%) and Acre (-25%). The smallest changes were in Piauí (-6.3%), Bahia (-6.9%) and Paraíba (-6.9%).
According to the institute, the number of deaths registered in 2022 was still higher than the average for the five years prior to the pandemic, around 1.276 million.
Furthermore, January 2022 had the highest number of deaths throughout the year, and was the only one that year to surpass the records for the same month in 2021. According to IBGE, one of the possible causes may have been the third wave of Covid-19 , driven by the spread of the omicron variant, in addition to an influenza epidemic, may be behind the high number.
The increase in deaths of children and adolescents — up to 14 years old — between 2021 and 2022 may be linked, according to IBGE, to mortality from Covid-19.
Data from the Ministry of Health’s Mortality Information System show that 60% of the difference in deaths from 2021 to 2022 for the age group 0 to 14 years old was due to respiratory diseases. Vaccination for this group started later, after adults.
In Rio Grande do Norte, mortality in the 1 to 4 year old group more than doubled, with a 110.4% increase. All states had an increase, with the exception of Rio Grande do Sul, which recorded a 13% drop for this age group.
The gender marker also differentiates deaths in Brazil. The drop among females, of 14.5% in the comparison between 2022 and 2021, was lower than that recorded among males, of 16.8%. On average, there were 121 male deaths for every 100 female deaths.
Another indicator concerns unnatural deaths. The category includes homicides, suicides, traffic accidents, drownings and accidental falls, among other reasons, and mainly affects men, with 85,195 deaths in 2022. Women were 16,943 victims that year.
The state with the highest share of unnatural deaths in 2022 was Amapá (13.8%), followed by Tocantins (11.8%) and Roraima (11.2%). According to the most recent edition of the Brazilian Public Security Yearbook, Amapá was also the state with the highest rate of intentional violent deaths — 50.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants — among Brazilian states. The indicator includes intentional homicide, robbery, bodily injury followed by death and deaths resulting from police interventions on and off duty.
