It is a reference publication, which confirms the considerable impact of Covid-19 on mortality figures in France at the peak of the pandemic. Public Health France, in collaboration with Inserm and the statistics department of the Ministry of Health (Drees) published this Tuesday its annual study on the major causes of death for the year 2021.
660,168 people died in 2021: a total lower than that of 2020, with 667,497 deaths, but which remains “significantly higher than that of previous years even taking into account the aging of the population”. The common factor in these two years: the peak of the Covid-19 epidemic. As in 2020, Covid remained the third cause of death in 2021, representing 9.2% of all deaths over the year, or 60,895 people who died directly from the virus.
A slightly lower number than in 2020, when nearly 69,000 deaths from Covid were recorded, but similar in terms of proportion (10.4% of deaths in 2020). According to the study, the main causes of death in 2021 remained tumors, at 25.7%, and diseases of the circulatory system, at 20.9%.
Public Health France once again notes the predominantly elderly profile of people who died from the epidemic, with a median age of deaths rising to 84 years in 2021, compared to 86 years in 2020. The study also highlights a “higher mortality significant in the overseas departments and regions (DROM) compared to 2020, with in particular a marked epidemic peak in August 2021 in the Antilles.”
An increase in cardiovascular diseases
Covid is nevertheless not the only factor to explain the continuation of the upward trend in the number of deaths in France in 2020 and 2021. The study points to an increase in mortality “due to diseases of the system circulatory system in 2021, to endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases and of the digestive system from 2020”, a trend which was nevertheless decreasing at the end of the previous decade.
Here too, however, Covid could have been important. According to Public Health France, this increase in deaths from cardiovascular diseases or of nutritional origin “could be linked to indirect effects of the Covid-19 epidemic (delay in care, greater social isolation affecting behavior, increased harmful consumption of alcohol, difficulties in accessing care, after-effects for those whose Covid-19 is an associated cause, etc.)”, explains the study by the health agency, which nevertheless specifies that it is not is “at this stage it is not possible to assess the share of these factors in the observed increase”.
Indirect effects of Covid
A lead confirmed by Anne Fouillet, epidemiologist at Public Health France, who told AFP that there were “some hypotheses for these increases which could be linked to indirect effects of the Covid epidemic”.
“We can think of difficulties in accessing care as well as greater social isolation which may have influenced differences in behavior and consumption,” she detailed, specifying that these trends were also observed In other countries. Covid-19 and in particular its longer-term impact, a subject of study still in full exploration for scientists, could still be far from having revealed all its secrets.