Cardiovascular Mortality During the COVID-19 Pandemics in a Large Brazilian City: A Comprehensive Analysis

INTRODUCTION: The impact of COVID-19 pandemics on cardiovascular diseases (CVD) may be caused by health system reorganization and/or collapse, or from changes in the behaviour of individuals. In Brazil, municipalities were empowered to define regulatory measures, potentially resulting in diverse effects on CVD morbimortality. OBJECTIVE: To analyse the impact of COVID-19 pandemics on CVD outcomes in Belo Horizonte (BH), the sixth greater capital city in Brazil, including: mortality, mortality at home, hospitalizations, intensive care unit utilization, and in-hospital mortality; and the differential effect according to sex, age range, social vulnerability, and pandemic’s phase. METHODS: Ecological study analysing data from the Mortality and Hospital Information System of BH residents aged ≥30 years. CVD was defined as in Chapter IX from ICD-10. Social vulnerability was classified by a composite socioeconomic index as high, medium and low. The observed age-standardized rates for epidemiological weeks 10–48, 2020, were compared to the expected rates (mean of 2015–2019). Risk ratios (RiR) were analysed and 95% confidence intervals were calculated for all estimates. Population projected to 2020 for BH and its census tracts were used to calculate rates. RESULTS: We found no changes in CVD mortality rates (RiR 1.01, 95%CI 0.96–1.06). However, CVD deaths occurred more at homes (RiR 1.32, 95%CI 1.20–1.46) than in hospitals (RiR 0.89, 95%CI 0.79–0.99), as a result of a substantial decline in hospitalization rates, even though proportional in-hospital deaths increased. The rise in home deaths was greater in older adults and in had an increasing gradient in those more socially vulnerable (RiR 1.45); for high (RiR 1.45), medium (RiR 1.32) and low vulnerability (RiR 1.21). CONCLUSION: The greater occurrence of CVD deaths at home, in parallel with lower hospitalization rates, suggests that CVD care was disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemics, which more adversely affected older and more socially vulnerable individuals, exacerbating health inequities in BH.