The astronomical death figures recorded in 2021 in Cuba by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI) suggest thatCOVID deaths were more than six times higher than those officially reported by the government.
Thetotal deaths reported in Cuba in 2021 They amounted to 167,645, which compared to the previous year - when 112,439 people died - represented an increase of 55,206 deaths.
The dramatic jump represents an excess of mortality compared to years prior to the arrival of SARS-CoV-2 in Cuba and suggests thatCoronavirus deaths could be six times more than official figures.
The Cuban scientist Amílcar Pérez Riverol had warned about the issue: “How many Cubans really died from COVID-19 in 2021, especially due to the Delta wave?” he asked on Twitter, and advanced the preparation of an analysis on the matter.
“But official data (ONEI) clearly suggests that there were several thousand more (3-5X) than the 8,177 reported that year. Or even the current total of 8,529,” he added, citing the number of deaths in 2021 plus the total to date.
Excess mortality is an indicator that includes the total number of deaths during a crisis period that exceed the number considered “normal.” To determine excess mortality, the total number of deaths during, for example, the epidemic peak is compared with the historical trend of a preceding period, free of the pandemic.
The indicator has been useful in determining the real impact of COVID around the world, beyond the statistics given at the time and which depend on diagnostic tests that cannot always be performed.
Based on excess mortality, experts from the World Health Organization estimate that14.9 million deaths can be associated with the pandemic. The figure includes the 6.2 million official COVID deaths reported to the WHO by its 194 member countries.
To understand the abrupt jump in deaths in Cuba,CyberCuba took a sample of how deaths behaved in the five years prior to the pandemic, once again, based on ONEI statistics. Specifically, the difference between one year and the previous year, from 2014 to 2019, was taken as a reference and then compared with the difference in deaths between 2020 and 2021.
In 2015, for example, 3,361 more people died in Cuba than in 2014; while from 2015 to 17 (due to the lack of figures corresponding to 2016) 7,258 more died, showing an upward trend, with rates of 9.15 deaths per thousand inhabitants in 2019 until increasing to 15.0 in 2021. That is, that every year more people die in Cuba than the previous one.
The sum of the differences between one year and another from 2014 to 2019 results in 12,750 deaths, this is a quarter of what increased from 2020 to 2021. The average of that sum is around 2,550 deaths.
However,In 2021, 55,206 more deaths were recorded than in 2020, of which, and following the annual average figure, 2,550 could be associated with diseases, accidents or natural causes that have nothing to do with the pandemic, as was the case until 2019. The above leaves a total of52,656 deaths, a figure 6.4 times higher than the 8,177 reported in 2021 as deaths from coronavirus that year.
This does not mean that the 52,656 people died because they were infected with COVID, but that they are also related to the hospital saturation associated with the coronavirus.
As of March 2021, the health situation became complex. Complaints from residents and doctors in the province of Matanzas pointed to an increase in infections, development towards serious forms of the virus and deaths from COVID. At the beginning of April, MINSAP authorities confirmed the presence on the island of two new and more lethal strains of coronavirus, Californian (whose scientific name is B.1.427/B.1.429), South African (Beta) and, later, that of India(Delta).
Before the end of the month, the Minister of Health José Ángel Portal Miranda assured that the province of Matanzas had “afatality rate above that of the world and above that of the Americas," he stressed without providing data.
The people of Granma also complained on social networks, including health personnel, whether openly or protected by a pseudonym, against the threats from the authorities that, in cases like that of Dr. Alexander Jesús Figueredo Izaguirre, ended with the loss of a loved one. expulsion from work and disqualification from practicing medicine.
The above would be the prediction of the debacle that was about to occur in the public health system and that will last seven months.
Reports of deaths in isolation centers and in homes, lack of ambulances, medicines,PCR, means of protection and oxygen that led to the massive protests of theJuly 11 and in the complaints of nearly fiftydoctors in Holguín on the 15th andAugust 18.
A week before, Minister Portal Miranda announced that the lethality of the coronavirus in the province of Holguín was 0.87 and was above the country's average. Therefore,"the risk of dying here in Holguín is higher", said.
Ciego de Ávila also experienced a collapse in health and funeral services, while Guantánamo recorded an increase in mortality from COVID-19, during July and the first half of August, reporting 901 deaths at the end of the seventh month of the year and between 60 and 80 deaths daily at the beginning of the eighth.
The norm before COVID ranged between six and 12 deaths, the director of Community Services, Ihosvanys Fernández, indicated on local television, who added that 200 people had died in the first five days of August, without being able to explain the excess of deaths.
Cubans in several provinces denounced the carrying out ofmass burials, while the state press denied the existence of collective graves that were built to bury the thousands who died daily.
On July 19, Cuba reached the highest per capita COVID infection rate in the Americas (55 people infected per 100,000) and on July 20, the Ministry of Public Health stopped offering details about the deaths, given the increase of deaths. They never reportedhow many Cuban doctors died from coronavirus.
In mid-August, the official MINSAP website warned, based on studies by thePedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine (IPK), that in Cuba the delta variant had “replaced the Beta, with a sustained increase starting in June”, becoming “the predominant strain, its presence being detected in all Cuban provinces. Until August 15, Delta occupied 92% of the samples processed in the month,” the text added.
The highest number of infections in one day was published on August 24 and amounted to 9,907. Until that time, 4,710 people had died as a result of the coronavirus in the country. The figure is around the difference between the deaths between 2009 and 2010, after the H1N1 virus passed through the island, and between 2013 and 2014, after the appearance in Latin America of chikungunya and Zika and an increase in cases of dengue.
In both cases, recorded deaths exceeded four thousand compared to the previous year, representing almost half of the total of 8,529 confirmed COVID deaths to date.
But returning to 2021, there is another aggravating factor in the population decline according to the ONEI. The decrease in the birth rate, estimated at 5,942 less than in 2020, among other causes due to the increase in the infant mortality rate to 7.6 per thousand live births and due to the economic, political and social instability on the island.
Hence, with 55,000 more deaths and almost six thousand fewer births, the total population of Cuba, which in 2020 was 11,193,470 inhabitants, was reduced to 11,113,215 Cubans in 2021, that is, 68,380 less in that year. .
And this indicator is precisely another cause for concern. The rate ofWorld mortality shows a sustained decrease, in addition to the expected increase as a result of deaths associated with the pandemic. However, the pattern of deaths in Cuba year after year goesgrowing up. Why does Cuba's mortality rate (apart from 2021) continue to rise? This would be another analysis that, at some point, would have to be addressed.
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