The main cause of death in 2020, in the European Union (EU), were cardiovascular diseases and not covid-19, which was the third in the year it became a pandemic, Eurostat announced this Tuesday.
According to data from the statistical service, in the year in which the pandemic wovid-19 arrived in Europe, cardiovascular diseases, which affect the circulatory system, i.e. the heart and blood vessels, were the leading cause of death in 23 Member States, with the exception of Denmark, France, Ireland and the Netherlands, where deaths from cancer prevailed .
These two groups of diseases were the most fatal in the EU, with a total of 1.7 million deaths from cardiovascular diseases and 1.2 million from cancer.
In the year the pandemic began, covid-19, caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was the third leading cause of death in the EU with nearly 439,000 deaths.
According to the most recent data from the World Health Organization, until February 28, 2022, the pandemic – declared on March 11, 2020 – had caused 6,859,093 deaths worldwide.