The Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) Core team, comprising three government Ministries of Home Affairs, Health, and Development Planning (Bureau of Statistics) presented excess mortality report on pre-Covid-19, being 2015-2019 and during 2020-2021 Covid-19 periods.
On opening, the Principal Secretary, Home Affairs noted that the report would in future assist in fighting other pandemics in the country and acknowledged the assistance of the American Agency of Centre for Disease Control (CDC) for their untiring support.
In the Report the pattern for 2021 in January and February, the death rate surpassed the normal expectation – (grey range) as opposed to 2015-2019, where mortality rate was generally at a stable range.
Mr. Napo Khuele, Director of National Identity and Civil Registry (a.i), outlined the mandate of the department, but mostly their contribution to the report. He showed that as a department, theirs is to register deaths and causes of death; these is stored as civil registration records, then passed on to BOS for analysis, while ministry of health looks at the causes of deaths, mortality and measures of control, and of disasters and pandemics.
The CRVS Core Team, analyzed and produced a Report from civil registration records from Home Affairs database, which was used to compare mortality rates for pre-COVID -19 (2015-2019) and during COVID -19 (2020-2021).
The analysis was to see how many deaths occurred during that time as compared to 2020-2021 period. The remainder which is recorded as excess, are deaths that can be directly and indirectly attributed to Covid-19 pandemic. The Ministry of Health showed that from May to November 2020, mortality rate was within range (during the Omicron variant), but in December the range started to increase, from then until it reached unexpected excess in January 2021, during the Delta variant; these excesses could directly and indirectly be attributed to Covid-19 pandemic. It was reported that most deaths were of females aged 65 years and above.