Almost a fifth of the deaths recorded in the State in the first quarter of the year were due to Covid-19, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said on Friday.
In its Vital Statistics report for January to March, the CSO said there were 9,564 deaths in the quarter, up 10.3 per cent on the 8,674 reported for the same period last year.
It said 1,846 deaths were due to Covid-19, some 19.3 per cent of the total. The State saw significant numbers of deaths from the disease after a major surge in cases followed the relaxation of pandemic measures before Christmas.
“The mean average age of death was 81.7 years, while the median age was 83.4 years for all deaths due to Covid-19 in quarter 1 2021,” the CSO said.
In its report, which also included statistics on births, marriages and population changes, the CSO said cancer and circulatory disease remained the biggest causes of death in Ireland. These accounted for 4,759 (49.8 per cent) of deaths, a decrease from 4,972 (or 57.3 per cent) in the same period last year.
There were 185 deaths due to accidents, suicides and other external causes such as road crashes, the report states. There were 454 deaths due to dementia of which 283 (62.3 per cent) were women and 142 deaths due to Alzheimer’s of which 96 (or 67.6 per cent) were women.
Births
The CSO said the number of births recorded in the quarter was down by 476 to 13,895, a decrease of 3.3 per cent.
The CSO said there were 37 infant deaths registered in the quarter, giving an infant mortality rate of 2.7 per 1,000 live births.
“There were 7,008 male births and 6,887 female births in quarter 1,” the CSO said. “The 13,895 births represent an annual birth rate of 11.2 per 1,000 of population. A decrease of 0.5 in the rate recorded in quarter 1 2020.”
The report said more than 40.1 per cent of all births were outside a marriage or civil partnership. The number of births to teenage mothers also fell in the period, down from 221 to 179 year on year. Some 79 per cent of births involved mothers with Irish nationality.
The average age of all mothers in the period was 33.1 years, the same as that recorded in the period last year. It said that 10 years ago the average age was 31.7 years.
The natural increase of the population, which is calculated by subtracting deaths from births, fell by almost a quarter (24 per cent) when compared to the same period last year – from 5,697 to 4,331.