Covid led to highest mortality rate — Discovery

Covid-19 was the leading cause of death among Discovery Health Medical Scheme (DHMS) members in 2021 and led to the highest mortality rate it has recorded, it says.

DHMS is SA’s biggest open medical scheme and is administered by Discovery Health, a subsidiary of JSE-listed health and life insurer Discovery. It has over 2.8-million beneficiaries, representing just under a third of SA’s medical scheme market.

Analysis of DHMS claims data over the past 13 years revealed higher death rates during 2020 and 2021, the majority of which were due to Covid-19, it said. SA recorded its first case on March 5 2020 and experienced four successive waves of infections.

Age and sex-standardised mortality rates reached their highest level in the history of the scheme in 2021, at 767 per 100,000 life years, up from 542 deaths per 100,000 life years the year before.

The surge in death rates during the pandemic marked a sharp departure from the decline in mortality observed over the previous decade, Discovery Health chief research actuary Shirley Collie said.

Age and sex standardised death rates fell by 10% from 515 deaths per 100,000 life years in 2010 to 461 deaths per 100,000 life years in 2019.

Death rates returned to nearly pre-pandemic levels by September 2022, at 480 deaths per 100,000 life years.

The mortality trends observed among DHMS members are consistent with data previously released by Discovery Life, which paid out a record R11.79bn on claims in 2021, almost triple the figure it paid the year before. The findings are also in line with the Medical Research Council and the University of Cape Town’s analysis of death records.

Discovery Health’s analysis found a much higher increase in mortality rates among men than women during the early years of the pandemic, consistent with international research showing men were at elevated risk from the disease, Collie said.

The age standardised death rate per 100,000 lives stood at 912 for men in 2021, compared to 641 for women.

The top 10 causes of death over the past decade had remained the same, with some changes in the rankings of the conditions, except for 2021, when Covid-19 accounted for the highest proportion of deaths.

Infectious diseases, which included Covid-19, accounted for 42.1% of the deaths recorded among DHMS beneficiaries in 2021. In each of the two years before Covid struck, the proportion of DHMS members killed by infectious diseases was just 2.3%. Among both men and women, cancer was the biggest killer, followed by heart disease.

Though the pandemic had eased, Covid-19 remained a threat and 119 DHMS members were hospitalised with the disease up to May 23, Collie said.