MANILA - The Philippines recorded fewer births and more deaths from January to August this year, compared to the same period last year, the Philippine Statistics Authority said on Thursday.

According to latest figures from the agency, there were 703,400 births in the country during the first eight months of this year, lower than 981,270 recorded during the same period in 2020.

Marizza Grande, officer-in-charge and assistant national statistician of PSA's Civil Registration Service, said one of the possible reasons for the decline in birth registration is the pandemic restrictions that prevented people from registering.

"So 'yung mga restrictions, nagkaroon po tayo ng problema in terms sa reporting. Delayed registration ng birth (We had problem with the restrictions in terms of reporting. There were delayed registration of births),” she told ABS-CBN News.

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While there is already a “decreasing trend” in the number of births from 2015 (1,744,767) to 2020 (1,528,739), the pandemic could have dissuaded couples from getting married by as much as almost 50%, and from getting pregnant.

“We observed na may declining trend sa marriage. Kung titignan natin sa datos ng 2019 na naitala sa marriage certificate, meron tayong 431,972. Samantalang nung 2020, for the whole year last year, meron lang tayong naitalang 240,775. So, halos kalahati,” Grande said.

(We observed there is a declining trend in the number of marriages. If you look at our data in 2019, we had 431,972 marriage registrations, while in 2020, we only had 240,775. The different is almost half.)

“Bawal ang mga salo-salo especially nung mga period na nag-start ang pandemic. April, May, June talagang halos walang naitalang marriage certificate sa ating mga civil marriage registry,” Grande said on how the COVID-19 restrictions could have affected the number of marriages last year.

(Eating together was banned, especially during the onset of the pandemic in 2020. Nearly none applied at the civil marriage registry in April, May and June of that year.)

ABS-CBN Data Analytics Head Edson Guido, who has been monitoring various data and numbers related to COVID-19, agreed.

“If you look at these numbers, posibleng maraming nag-decide na 'wag munang magka-anak dahil sa hirap na rin ng pandemic (it's possible a lot of people delayed their plans of having a child due to hardship brought by the pandemic)," he said.

Meanwhile, there were 486,401 deaths recorded in the country from January to August 2021, compared to 400,501 in the same period last year.

Grande said that 8.8 percent of deaths logged from January to June this year were due to COVID-19.

However, she said the PSA cannot conclude if the number of COVID deaths in the country is already considered “alarming”, as they have yet to study how coronavirus vaccines affected the mortality rate.

“Titignan natin sa mga susunod na buwan since sinasabing bumababa ang cases dahil tumaas ang vaccination program,” she said.

(We will see in the coming months since they say cases are going down due to the country's vaccination program.)

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Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, pneumonia are still the top killer diseases in the country, based on PSA’s figures for the whole year of 2020.

Grande, meanwhile, said the PSA is improving its services so lawmakers can use their data for policy-making.

The agency will also continue its campaign to increase birth registration.

She said they have now increased their slots for online application to make it easier for the public to get the documents they need.

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