The decline has increased tenfold: how St. Petersburg is losing population

The natural decline in the population in St. Petersburg in 2020 became the most significant in the last 10 years and reached almost 18 thousand people, follows from Petrostat data. For comparison: in 2019, this figure was 308 people. The numbers thus differ by almost 60 times. Commenting on this statistic, RBC Petersburg experts argue that it is the result not only of deaths from covid-19 , but also of the deplorable state of urban medicine.

Naked numbers

In 2020, according to Petrostat, 73,298 people died in St. Petersburg (which is comparable to the entire population of Vyborg), which is 14,000 more than a year earlier. So far, the city has mostly recorded population growth, as the decline in the birth rate (which has been falling since 2017) has been offset by a simultaneous reduction in deaths. In 2019, the population decline was insignificant.

The birth rate in 2020, according to Petrostat, fell by 3.5 thousand people compared to 2019. Demographers explain this mainly by a sharp decrease in the number of migrants who were forced to leave the city due to the pandemic.

As for mortality, one of the main factors in its increase was the CORONAVIRUS pandemic, Vitaly Skogorev, deputy HEAD of Petrostat, explained to RBC Petersburg. “The increase in mortality in 2020 is due to the spread of a new coronavirus infection, both as the main cause of recorded mortality and as a concomitant disease that affected the development of other diseases or caused complications that accelerated the patient’s death,” Skogorev said.

According to statistics, COVID-19 accounted for 15.5% of deaths in St. Petersburg in 2020. Thus, coronavirus as a cause of death ranked third after diseases of the circulatory system and oncology.