According to the EU office, in the 22 member states of the Union a circulatory diseasesand in Denmark, Ireland, France and the Netherlands a cancer was the main cause of death.
About 1.7 million died from circulatory diseases and almost 1.2 million from cancer.
Together, the two groups of diseases accounted for 55 percent of deaths in the EU, with the lowest proportion in Belgium (42 percent) and the highest in Bulgaria (76 percent).
Among the EU member states, the rate of deaths caused by diseases of the circulatory system was the highest in Bulgaria (61 percent), and the lowest in France (20 percent). The rate of deaths caused by cancer was the highest in Ireland (29 percent) and the lowest in Bulgaria (15 percent), they wrote.
In the first year of the spread of the epidemic in Europe the coronavirus was the third leading cause of death in EU countries, with a total of almost 439,000 deaths. The highest rates of deaths due to COVID-19 were recorded in Belgium (18 percent) and Spain (15 percent), while the lowest were recorded in Finland and Estonia (1 percent each).
According to the graph published in the Eurostat report, circulatory diseases caused about 47 percent of all deaths in Hungary, cancer was responsible for about 20 percent of deaths, and the coronavirus was responsible for 2 percent of deaths in 2020.
Among EU countries, the death rate per 100,000 inhabitants was the highest in Bulgaria (1,787) in 2020. Bulgaria was followed by Romania (1622), Hungary (1513), Lithuania (1482) and Latvia (1445). Among EU countries, the lowest rate of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants was registered in France (863) and Ireland (892), ahead of Luxembourg (905), Finland (917) and Spain (919).
The cover image is an illustration, source: Getty Images
