AS of September 10, 2020, more than 245,000 Filipinos have been affected by Covid-19 while causing 3,986 deaths. One death is too many, but 3,986 is more than enough for individuals like me to personally know at least two who have died of Covid-19.
Still, something paradoxical has been developing in death statistics so far this year. The latest data of deaths is up to June 2020, and so, a fair assessment to make is to compare the first six months of this year with the same period of last year. Here goes. In the first half of the said years, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) has recorded 259,246 deaths this year compared to 309,010 deaths last year, a drop of the number of deaths by almost 50,000 or a drop by 16 percent.
Normally, the leading causes of deaths has to do with the following. That is, ischemic heart diseases, malignant neoplasms, pneumonia, cerebrovascular diseases, hypertensive diseases, diabetes mellitus, other heart diseases, respiratory tuberculosis, chronic lower respiratory infections, and the remainder of diseases of genitourinary system account for 69 percent of male and 74 percent of female deaths. If these diseases are not dangerous enough, these if infected with Covid-19 can be multiple times more lethal. So, one could have easily predicted that so many of these people could have been infected by Covid-19, which could have easily spiked the death statistics. Still, the aggregate death statistics has declined.
From January to June, the cases of Covid-19 had increased. So, one would think the death statistics would have increased by the month. Quite contrary. In January and February, the number of deaths declined by an average of 7 percent compared to the same period the previous year. In March and April, the number of deaths declined by an average of 17 percent. In May and June, the number of deaths declined by 15 and 35 percent, respectively. With the cases of Covid-19 exponentially increasing, the number of deaths has declined at more dramatic rates. There must be something that Covid-19 is forcing us to do, and inadvertently is causing the death statistics to decline.
Some sensational causes of death—or causes by ways that easily make popular media—are murder and either vehicular or pedestrian accidents. With respect to these, could the lockdowns have dramatically kept bad people inside and commuters stationed as to lower vehicular and pedestrian traffic to avoid deaths of these nature from happening and thereby reduce death statistics? It could not have been because assault explains only 5 percent and 0.5 percent of deaths among males and females in 2016. More so, vehicular, and pedestrian traffic accidents are not even listed as among the top causes of deaths.
From balikprobinsya.ph, the Balik Probinsya program “is geared towards addressing Metro Manila’s congested urban areas by encouraging people, especially informal settlers, to return to their home provinces and assist them in this transition with support and incentives on transportation, family, livelihood, housing, subsistence and education, among others.” What if the program lessened congestion in metropolis areas improving health, and in the process inadvertently reducing the death statistics? Maybe. If so, those who had moved to the provinces would have increased the population in the rural regions and consequently increased the death statistics, or at least could have kept the death statistics in the said regions constant. However, even death statistics in rural regions have declined, e.g. 45 percent decline in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, 25 percent decline in the Eastern Visayas Region and 28 percent decline in the Mimaropa Region. In fact, all regions—urban and rural—in the Philippines have seen their deaths statistics decline.
Whatever the reasons are has to do with some common change among regions, thus a common decline of deaths across the country. With the combination of (1) the comorbidity diseases mentioned above leading the causes of deaths during normal times, (2) the Covid-19 particularly lethal to those with said diseases, and (3) the statistics of death declining, the reason must have something to do with behavioral changes that protect the citizens with the said leading causes of diseases from other types of infection and especially Covid-19.
One Covid-19 death is too many, and 3,200 deaths even more, and even hurtful to personally know some of our dear ones passing. But something has happened to have caused the death statistics to plunge. As people became responsibly conscious of Covid-19, people started to social distance, wear masks and wash hands. Inadvertently, people could have prevented each other from infecting others from other “common” infections and “normal” leading causes of death.
Luis F. Dumlao, PhD, is the Dean of the John
Gokongwei School of Management, Ateneo de
Manila University.