Descriptive study of COVID-19 mortality according to sex, schooling, age, health region and historical series: State of Rio de Janeiro, January 2020 to August 2021

Abstract

 Introduction: the first COVID-19 case in the state of Rio de Janeiro was registered on march 6 2020 and SARS-Cov-2 has been impacting population’s lives on biopsychosocial aspects since, being characterized as a syndemic and overwhelming the Brazilian public Unified Health System. Objectives: describe the COVID-19 pandemic through demographic stratification of deaths occurring from january 2020 to august 2021 and on Rio de Janeiro state’s health service regions.  Methods: this is an aggregate transversional study, which used data available from the Health Ministry, producing a descriptive epidemiology. Measures of absolute prevalence and standardized mortality ratio (SMR) were calculated; population size used was the one estimated to 2020. Associations between variables were checked by Pearson’s test. Results: statistically significant associations were observed between scholarity, sex, age and health service region in relation to COVID-19 deaths and by other causes. About COVID-19 mortality, there was an association between scholarity and sex, highlighting more deaths than expected on higher educated males and on no educated females.  The health regions Metropolitana I and II had SMR over 100%, and the other regions had low SMR, specially Baía da Ilha Grande and Baixada Litorânea regions which had less deaths than expected. Conclusions: the results showed demographic, geographic and historic patterns of the pandemic on Rio de Janeiro state, which may represent socioeconomic vulnerabilities, allowing to characterize COVID-19 as a syndemic.