Analysis of the number of deaths in Brazil between 2003 and 2020 and possible inferences about the COVID-19 pandemic and history of other diseases

Abstract

The historical number of yearly deaths in Brazil has a growing tendency since always. In recent years were observed increases in this number beyond the tendency, probably associated to epidemics. In this work it was implemented an analysis on public data, using the total number of deaths from violence, respiratory diseases, and deaths in hospitals. The historical series of deaths in Brazil from 2003 to 2019 was used to estimate the number of deaths in 2020 by a statistical projection, and this estimate value was compared with the number of deaths recorded as “Deaths with suspicion or confirmation of COVID-19”. It was verified that deaths attributed to COVID-19 far exceed the statistical projections but this result was interpreted together with the numbers of deaths by respiratory diseases. Increasing of deaths between 2019 and 2020 can be partially explained by a lowering in the deaths of violence in 2019. In this paper it was verified that despite de pandemic the difference between number of deaths between 2020 and 2019 remained in the same order of magnitude as the difference in the past, in periods which can be associated to other infectious diseases as H1N1 and dengue, for example.

Key words
COVID-19; Brazil; epidemics; pandemics