Researcher: share of elderly population in cities down because of COVID-19

February 13, BPN. For the first time since 2018, Belarusian cities saw a decrease in the share of retirement-age population, said Alaksandr Aŭtuška-Sikorski, a researcher at the Center for New Ideas, at the presentation of the center’s study, Belarusian City Ranking 2022.

He said a drop in older population was recorded in each of the 40 surveyed cities with over 19,000 citizens, which account for two-thirds of the country’s population.

“The decrease is quite small, four to six percent on average for each city. Nevertheless this trend is unusual. This is an abnormal rejuvenation of cities, since Belarusians are an aging nation and the share of the population of retirement age had increased every year,” Aŭtuška-Sikorski noted.

He suggested that the trend was due to a high mortality rate from COVID-19. “Mortality from coronavirus is much higher among older people, and we assume that the decrease in the share of the elderly population in cities is an indirect indicator of the COVID-19 epidemic’s impact on Belarusians,” he added.

The researcher pointed out that obtaining accurate data is difficult because access to official statistics, including data on mortality from COVID-19 in the context of cities, is restricted.

The Ministry of Health has not published data on COVID-19 incidence and mortality for more than seven months.

On July 5, 2022 the ministry reported that 994,037 cases of COVID-19 have been registered in the country, and that 7,118 people have died since the pandemic began. The ministry hasn’t reported incidence ever since. The website of Minsk’s hygiene center reports global incidence stats almost weekly, but only cites July’s data for Belarus.

On November 9, BPN asked the press offices of the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters and its European office to comment on the lack of relevant data on COVID-19 incidence from Belarus.

There has been no response from the WHO so far.