Istat said on Monday that the figure was around 384,000 fewer than a year earlier, a decline of 0.64 per cent, reports Xinhua news agency. 

Nearly a quarter of the decline came from a significant drop-off in the population of immigrants, which totalled nearly 80,000 last year, or around 1.3 per 1,000 residents, about half the rate of arrivals a year earlier, Istat noted. 

Istat did not link the impact of the coronavirus pandemic with the change in population. 

But the country's Ministry of Health reported that nearly 75,000 deaths were officially attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic, and media reports have speculated that the health criris has put downward pressure on the country's birthrate and on immigrant arrivals. 

Istat's figures are lower than those from the UN, which estimated the country's population to be at 60,461,826 last year, a 0.15 per cent decline from the previous year. 

The UN figures are more likely to include people living in the country who are not official residents. 

The country's population is important for calculating per-capita figures. 

For example, as of Monday, 6,302,433 Italian residents had been completely vaccinated against the coronavirus, government figures showed. 

Based on Istat's latest population data, that figure is the equivalent to 10.64 per cent of the population, compared to 10.56 per cent using the population data available before Monday.