Spain recorded 75,000 more deaths in one year and casts doubt on the true balance of the coronavirus pandemic

Data on deaths in Spain in 2020 collected by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) reveals that in the year of the pandemic, deaths soared by 17.7%, with 75,305 more deaths than the year previous, bringing the country’s mortality to post-war levels.

According to the data, Last year 492,930 people died in Spain, the highest figure since 1941, after the bloody Spanish Civil War. This is a 17.7% increase over one year compared to the previous year, when 417,625 people died.

In its statistics on natural population movements published this Thursday, INE did not specify the reasons for the excess mortality detected last year, but data from the Ministry of Health already confirmed in January that As of December 31, 2020, 51,078 Spaniards had died from covid-19.

This suggests that the official number of victims of the pandemic in Spain is underestimated. Spain is not, however, an isolated case: according to the WHO itself, the death toll from the coronavirus worldwide is 2 or 3 times higher than the official, especially because of the lack of testing at the start of the pandemic.

The tables of the official Spanish statistical entity show that the largest increases in deaths occurred in the first and second waves. In March and April, the harshest months of the first wave, increases in mortality were record-breaking, with increases of 56.8% Yes 78.2%, respectively. The death rate rose again from August and soared in October and November, when the the number of deaths increased by 21.0% and 21.6%, respectively, compared to what happened a year earlier.

The most significant increases were recorded in the Community of Madrid (41.2%), Castilla-La Mancha (32.3%), Castilla y León (26.0%) and Catalonia (23.5%).

The 75 to 79 age group was the most affected, men (+ 25.0%) and women (+ 22.4%). However, COVID-19 has also had an impact on the infant mortality rate, which increased by one hundredth in 2020 and amounted to 2.66 deaths per 1,000 live births.

Statistics also show that in 2020 life expectancy fell for the first time in decades in Spain: 82.34 years, a decrease of 1.24 years.

On another side, in 2020 there was also a drop in the birth rate, with a 5.9% decrease compared to the previous year (21,411 fewer births, 339,206 in total).

The result was that the balance between new births and deaths in 2020 was negative in 153,167 people, the largest annual decline in decades.

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