Registered deaths due to COVID-19 accounted for a total of 105, 723 deaths, or 13.8 percent of the total from January to December 2021, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said Tuesday.

The top three causes of death in that period were ischaemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, and COVID-19 virus identified.

Among the 17 regions, Calabarzon registered the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19 with 21,165 or 20 percent of the total COVID-19 deaths from January to December 2021.

The National Capital Region (NCR) ranked second with 20,924 deaths (19.8 percent), while Central Luzon came in third with 18,828 deaths (17.8 percent). On the other hand, ARMM reported the least number of registered COVID-19 deaths with only 162 cases.

In the NCR, Quezon City reported the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19, with 4,660 deaths or 22.3 percent of the total COVID-19 deaths in the region.

This was followed by the City of Manila and City of Pasig with 2,976 (14.2 percent) and 2,075 (9.9 percent) COVID-19 deaths, respectively.

In the same period of 2020, the leading causes of death were ischaemic heart diseases, neoplasms, and cerebrovascular diseases.

Ischaemic heart diseases were the leading cause of death with 136,575 cases or 17.8 percent of the total deaths in the country.

This indicated an increase of 29.7 percent from the 105,281 deaths or 17.1 percent of the total deaths in the same period of 2020. On the other hand, cerebrovascular diseases, came in second with 74,262 deaths (9.7 percent share) from being third in the previous year’s ranking.

It showed an increase of 15.3 percent from the 64,381 cases (10.5 percent share) in the same period in 2020. Deaths due to COVID-19 virus identified were the third leading cause which accounted for 74,008 deaths (9.7 percent share), rising from rank 14 with 9,316 deaths (1.5 percent share) in the same period of 2020.

Neoplasms, commonly known as “cancer” ranked as the fourth leading cause of death with 59,503 recorded cases (7.8 percent share).

It dropped from being the second leading cause of death with 66,342 deaths (10.8 percent share) from the previous year’s ranking. Meanwhile, deaths due to diabetes mellitus (48,267 or 6.3 percent share), which ranked fifth in 2021, had an increase of 21 percent. PSA