The Mexican health sector was the most affected by the coronavirus, therefore the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (Inegi) refines the details to make known the total death toll from COVID in the country during 2020 and thus be able to measure the impact of this crisis in the year of the pandemic.
“From a health point of view, we had a very strong problem because it took us, in regular years, about 10 months to release the mortality figures for the previous year,” Julio Santaella, president of Inegi, explained in an interview.
Data from the Ministry of Health indicate that as of June 22 there were 231,505 deaths from coronavirus and more than 2.482 million infections.
The 2020 figures would have been released in October 2021, however, given the COVID-19 emergency and how important it is to size its effects, the Inegi team, with the help of the Ministry of Health and the National Registry of Population, they worked in the registration and collection of death certificates. In January of this year, preliminary figures for the first eight months of 2020 of the pandemic were presented, and the following month the preliminary figures for all of 2020 will be released, explained Julio Santaella.
“The final figures for 2020 will be released next October, with the verification and crossing of the Ministry of Health,” the official detailed.
From January to August 2020, Inegi registered 108,658 deaths from coronavirus in Mexico , a figure below the 141,873 human losses from heart disease, but above the 99,733 deaths from diabetes.
“The mortality figures help you to know what the main causes are and take public policy in this regard, for example, this information was crossed with the National Health and Nutrition Survey that was carried out in 2018-2019, and helped to design a map of comorbidities due to COVID-19 by municipality, such as diabetes and hypertension, and also helped to design vaccination policy, “said the economist, whose current presidency of the Inegi front ends on December 31 next.
Economic effects
Inegi has also focused on the economic effects of the pandemic; In less than a year, Mexico lost 12 million jobs due to social distancing and the temporary suspension of economic activities. According to the 2020 Business Demography Study (EDN), from January 2020 to May 2021, the country lost 1.1 million commercial establishments: “Most of them were small businesses such as hairdressers, tortilla shops, restaurants,” said Santaella.
Meanwhile, in education it was detected that for the 2019-2020 school year there were five million students enrolled in educational institutions, and that for the 2020-2021 cycle they were no longer enrolled.
Julio Santaella explained that statistics are also collected to know the repercussions that the pandemic had in terms of violence (at work, physical, sexual, psychological, at work) against women, who were more affected by confinement, compared to men.
