Last year cancer was the leading cause of death in Taipei for the 51st consecutive year, while COVID-19 became the third most common cause of death in the city, the Taipei Department of Health said yesterday.
The department said 21,047 Taipei residents died last year, which is an increase of 2,395 people (12.8 percent) compared with the year before, while the mortality rate was 841 deaths per 100,000 people, which is 113.4 deaths (15.6 percent) more than the year before.
The growth rates of deaths and mortality were the highest on record.
Photo: Lo Pei-de, Taipei Times
They were mainly affected by the COVID-19 outbreak and aging population, it said.
Among the 10 leading causes of death in Taipei, cancer was followed by heart disease, COVID-19 infection, pneumonia, cerebrovascular disease, chronic lower respiratory disease, diabetes, hypertensive disease, kidney disease and vascular or unspecified dementia.
Deaths from the 10 leading causes accounted for 76.7 percent of all deaths in the city last year, and eight among the leading causes were chronic diseases, accounting for 62.4 percent of all the deaths in the city, it said.
The number of deaths due to cancer, pneumonia and cerebrovascular disease have slightly decreased last year, while deaths due to the other seven causes increased, and among them, COVID-19-related deaths increased by 1,287 people, which is 3.8 times of that from the year before, the department’s data show.
About 82.9 percent of the total deaths were of elderly people aged 65 or older, and of the COVID-19 related deaths, 90.2 percent were aged 65 or older.
The Taipei Department of Health’s Statistics Office Director Fan Ju-hsin (范汝欣) said that COVID-19 leaped from the 11th leading cause of death to the third leading cause of death last year, and that the city’s COVID-19 mortality rate was 65.1 deaths per 100,000 people, slightly higher than the nation’s COVID-19 mortality of 62.9 deaths per 100,000 people.
The high COVID-19 mortality rate could be explained by Taipei’s higher number of elderly residents — the second highest percentage of elderly in its population in the nation, she said, adding that the data also did not distinguish between the influence levels of different factors, such as those who died of COVID-19 and might also have had cancer, but were counted among the COVID-19-related deaths.
In other news, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) yesterday denied Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) Chairman Ko Wen-je’s (柯文哲) claim on Sunday about the government having received more donated COVID-19 vaccines than it purchased.
The CDC said Taiwan began purchasing COVID-19 vaccines in September 2020, and received vaccines donated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), Hon Hai Precision Industry Co-affiliated Yonglin Foundation, the Buddhist Compassion Relief Tzu Chi Foundation, as well as the governments of the US, Japan, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia.
As of the end of last month, Taiwan had received a total of 92.675 million doses of vaccines — 68.41 million doses purchased by the government and 24.265 million doses donated by the countries and agencies — it said, adding that the government had purchased 73.8 percent of the vaccine doses.
Additional reporting by CNA
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