E-Paper
Certified Covid deaths decreased to only 2,000 in 2023: MCCD report
A decline was also recorded in 2023 in deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, which is the biggest certified cause of death in India
The number of deaths where Covid-19 was medically certified as the leading cause continued to decrease in 2023 with only 2,040 such cases recorded in the year, down from the peak of 413,000 in 2021. A decline was also recorded in 2023 in deaths due to cardiovascular diseases, which is the biggest certified cause of death in India. However, more than half of this decline was made up by growth of deaths due to respiratory diseases and those due to infections and parasites.
These trends were revealed in the report on the Medical Certification of Cause of Death (MCCD), published by the Office of the Registrar General of India (ORGI), under the ministry of home affairs, on Wednesday.
To be sure, the MCCD numbers must be read with caution. They capture only the fraction of registered deaths that are medically certified. 1,900,956 deaths were medically certified in 2023, which is 22% of registered deaths. This proportion is 30 basis points –– one basis point is one hundredth of a percentage point –– lower than in 2022, and the lowest since 2019, when the number was 20.7%. This number has fallen in every year after 2021, when it reached a peak of 23.4%.
In the subset of medically certified deaths, however, there was a big decline in Covid-19 deaths in 2023, expected from the first year when none of the three waves of the pandemic affected India. Covid-19 was the leading cause in only 2,040 deaths in 2023, down from the peak of 413,580 recorded in 2021, the deadliest year of the pandemic when around two million excess deaths are estimated to have taken place, according to CRS data. The number of medically certified Covid-19 deaths was 160,618 in 2020 and 25,393 in 2022.
On the other hand, cardiovascular diseases –– called diseases of the circulatory system in the MCCD –– led to 691,086 deaths in 2023, down from 788,049 in 2022. However, half of this decline of 96,963 deaths was made up by the growth in deaths due to respiratory diseases and those due to infectious and parasitic diseases. The number of the former increased from 187,356 in 2022 to 218,474 in 2023 and that of the latter increased from 143,546 in 2022 to 164,788 in 2023.
