Despite the country in pandemic due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) for nearly two years, it was not the leading cause of deaths in the Philippines for the January to October period in 2021.

These were ischaemic heart diseases, cerebrovascular diseases, and neoplasms, commonly known as cancer, the Philippine Statistics Agency (PSA) said Monday.

During the period, ischaemic heart diseases were the leading cause of death with 110,332 cases or 18.3 percent of the total deaths in the country. This indicated an increase of about 28 percent from the 86,164 deaths or 16.9 percent of the total deaths in the same period of 2020.

Cerebrovascular diseases, were second with 58,880 deaths (9.7 percent share) from being third in the previous year’s ranking. It showed an increase of 10.9 percent from the 53,082 cases (10.4 percent share) in the same period in 2020.

Deaths due to COVID-19 virus were the third leading cause which accounted for 51,514 deaths (8.5 percent share), rising from rank 15 with 7,357 deaths (1.4 percent share) in the same period of 2020.

Neoplasms, commonly known as “cancer” ranked as the fourth leading cause of death with 48,937 recorded cases (8.1 percent share) from January to October 2021.

It decreased from being the second leading cause of death with 55,700 deaths (11 percent share) from the previous year’s ranking.

Meanwhile, deaths due to diabetes mellitus (38,584 or 6.4 percent share), which ranked fifth in 2021, had an increase of 17.5 percent.

Registered deaths due to COVID-19 accounted for a total of 75,285 deaths or 12.5 percent of the total registered deaths from January to October 2021.

Among the 17 regions, the National Capital Region (NCR) registered the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19 with 18,044 or 24 percent of the total COVID-19 deaths from January to October 2021. Calabarzon ranked second with 16,630 deaths (22.1 percent), while Central Luzon came in third with 14,252 deaths (18.9 percent).

On the other hand, ARMM reported the least number of registered COVID-19 deaths with only 80 cases.

In NCR, Quezon City reported the highest number of deaths due to COVID-19, with 3,955 deaths or 21.9 percent of the total COVID-19 deaths in the region from January to October 2021.

This was followed by the City of Manila and City of Pasig with 2,558 (14.2 percent) and 1,832 (10.2 percent) COVID-19 deaths, respectively. PSA