SINGAPORE, July 8 (The Straits Times/ANN): Singapore is still counting the toll exacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, with a sharp spike in the number of deaths last year.
Official figures released on June 30 showed a 10.1 per cent rise in the number of deaths reported last year, compared with 2020.
The number of babies born last year, on the other hand, rose only marginally by 0.2 per cent.
Overall, a total of 24,292 people died last year, against 22,054 deaths in 2020 - a rise of 2,238.
It has been reported that around 800 died from Covid-19 last year.
The excess - or higher than expected - deaths have been attributed to several factors. For example, experts said that the pressure on the healthcare system caused by the pandemic may have contributed to the rise.
In March this year, the Ministry of Health (MOH) released numbers showing that the age-standardised death rate, which had been declining steadily between 2017 and 2019, shot up to 557 per 100,000 people last year, from 519 per 100,000 in 2020.
The age-standardised rate takes into account the age of the population to give a more meaningful comparison than the actual number of deaths.
MOH said the increase in the age-standardised death rate was not unexpected, given how the pandemic has been a health crisis that has killed millions of people in the world.
It added that Singapore, however, has recorded "one of the lowest rates of excess deaths in the Covid-19 pandemic from international comparisons so far".
Experts told The Straits Times that the rise in the number of deaths also reflected the wider impact of the pandemic.
Some people had to delay medical screenings and postpone non-urgent medical procedures while health workers were battling the pandemic.
While the number of deaths has risen every year over the past decade on account of the ageing population, the year-on-year rise has ranged from 1 per cent to 4 per cent.
Last year's spike of 10.1 per cent is an anomaly, experts said.
Associate Professor Jeremy Lim, director of the Leadership Institute for Global Health Transformation at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, pointed out that Covid-19 has placed major stresses on the healthcare system.
He noted that the Health Ministry had asked hospitals several times during the course of the pandemic to defer all non-urgent elective clinical services, so that hospital resources could focus on dealing with Covid-19 cases.
Such elective services could include surgery for serious conditions, he said.
The data released in the Report on Registration of Births and Deaths 2021 showed that the top three causes of death last year were cancer, heart and hypertensive diseases, and lung and respiratory system diseases, respectively.
Between them, they accounted for more than 70 per cent of deaths here last year.
Meanwhile, deaths from infectious and parasitic diseases rose by 3.1 per cent last year.
Professor Dale Fisher, a senior consultant at National University Hospital's Division of Infectious Diseases, said it was important to track the number of excess deaths during a disease outbreak.
He noted that deaths from heart and hypertensive diseases rose by 10.7 per cent last year.
One possibility was that during the pandemic, patients did not get their blood pressure or diabetes checked and managed as regularly as they should.
Meanwhile, NUS sociologist Tan Ern Ser said that the 0.2 per cent increase in births last year, with 38,672 babies born, was marginal.
He pointed out that the crude birth rate has been falling steadily in the past decade.
Crude birth rate refers to the number of babies born per 1,000 of the population.
The slight increase in the number of babies born last year could be a fluctuation, rather than a trend of general increase in births, said Professor Jean Yeung, founding director of the Centre for Family and Population Research at the NUS.
However, there was a 25.1 per cent jump in marriages last year (2021), according to 2021 marriage and divorce statistics released on Wednesday.
More couples getting hitched last year could see more babies being born this year and the next, the experts said. - The Straits Times/ANN
