The coronavirus pandemic drove deaths in SA to levels not seen since the height of SA’s HIV/Aids epidemic more than 15 years ago, cutting a swathe through the elderly and reversing hard-won gains in HIV treatment, according to the latest population report by Stats SA.
More than 701,300 deaths were recorded in the 12 months to mid-2021 and another 663,073 deaths occurred in the year to mid-2022, Stats SA said in its midyear population estimates for 2022.
“Evidently Covid-19 was not just the flu. It had a profound impact on the population,” said Stats SA’s chief director for demography and population statistics, Diego Iturralde. “The growth of the elderly population slowed in 2020 and 2021, there was a significant uptick in deaths, and a subsequent decline in life expectancy,” he told Business Day.
After almost two decades of steady decline, Aids-related deaths rose for the first time between 2020 and 2022, as the government’s response to the pandemic disrupted health services and left some patients unable to obtain vital antiretroviral (ARV) treatment. There were an estimated 80,199 Aids-related deaths in 2020, up from 78,508 the year before. Aids-related deaths rose to 87,915 in 2021 and dropped slightly in 2022 to 85,796, said Stats SA.
Stats SA estimated Aids-related deaths had peaked at 282,904 in 2006, when ARV treatment was not widely available.
Population growth among people aged 60 years and older drastically declined from 2.88% for the year to mid 2020 to 1.47% for the year to mid-2021. However, that has bounced back to 2.11% in the period 2021-2022.
“The social and economic effect of losing so many elderly people to the Covid-19 pandemic is likely to be felt in many years to come,” said Stats SA.
Life expectancy in SA has improved to 62.8 years from 61.7 in 2021 but has yet to recover to pre-Covid-19 levels, said Stats SA. Life expectancy stood at 65.4 in 2020.
Life expectancy for men declined from 62.3 years in 2020 to 59.2 years in 2021 and from 68.4 in 2020 to 64.2 for women. It has since improved to 60 years for men, and 65.6 years for women.
Stats SA estimated the midyear population for 2022 at 60.6-million, an increase of 1.06% on its revised midyear population estimate for 2021 of 59.96-million. Gauteng remained the most populous province, with 16.1-million people, representing more than a quarter of SA’s population. KwaZulu-Natal had 11.5-million people and the Western Cape 7.2-million.
SA saw a marked reduction in international migration during the Covid-19 pandemic, due to the travel restrictions imposed by governments as they first sought to contain initial outbreaks, and then strove to limit their exposure to new variants. International migration is expected to recover as the pandemic recedes, but the net in-migration between 2021 and 2026 is expected to be just 590,000, significantly lower than the 850,000 estimated for the five-year period between 2016 and to 2021.
Within SA, Stats SA expects Gauteng, the country’s economic heartland, to attract the most migrants, with a net increase of 828,777 in the five years to 2026, followed by the Western Cape (270,267) and North West (97,455).
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