More than twice as many deaths as births have been registered in Serbia in the first quarter of the year, the Republic Statistics Office said on Tuesday.

It said that 14,838 births were registered along with 35,736 deaths in the first three months of 2022 which means that the country lost 20,898 people.

The number of births in the same period of 2021 was 14,334, an increase of 3.5 percent in 2022. The number of deaths in the same period a year earlier was 33,535, an increase of 6.6 percent in 2022.