Mortality rate in Latvia up 17% this year

This year, 24 103 thousand deaths have been recorded up to September, which is 3.5 thousand or 17 % more than in the first nine months of last year.
The Covid-19 pandemic led to an increase in mortality, and the number of deaths in each month this year exceeded the figures for the same months last year, according to data from the Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia.
The number of deaths was highest at the end of last year and the beginning of this year and has been rising rapidly in recent weeks. Although there has been an increase in deaths in almost all age groups, the number of deaths in the 60+ age group is 20 % higher this year than in weeks 1-42 last year.
The number of births is also still declining, with 13 072 births recorded in the first nine months of 2021, 474 or 3.5 % fewer than in the same period of 2020.
Mortality has a significant impact on natural population growth. In the first nine months of 2021, the country’s population declined by 11 000 people as the number of deaths exceeded the number of births, which is almost the same decrease as last year as a whole.
On 1 October 2021, the estimated population in Latvia was 1 million 880 thousand.
Deaths – provisional number of deaths in the respective month. When compiling the annual statistics, the data are updated by including in the number of deaths persons who died in the respective month, registered as dead after the registration time set in the country (6 working days), as well as persons who were usually resident population of Latvia in the previous year but died while staying abroad for a certain period of time.