Virus pushed total US deaths past 3.3M in 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed total U.S. deaths last year beyond 3.3 million, the nation’s highest annual death toll, the government reported Wednesday.
The coronavirus caused about 375,000 deaths, and was the third leading cause of death in 2020, after heart disease and cancer. COVID19 deaths in the U.S. now top 550,000 since the start of the pandemic.
COVID-19 displaced suicide as one of the top 10 causes of death, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The data should serve again as a catalyst for each of us to continue to do our part to drive down cases and reduce the spread of COVID-19 and get people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday.
The U.S. death toll increases most years, but last year’s death rate was up nearly 16% compared with the previous year. That’s the largest one-year leap since 1918, when U.S. soldier deaths in World War I and the flu pandemic pushed deaths up 46% compared with 1917.
Death rates last year overall were highest among Black people and American Indian and Alaska Native people. The COVID19 death rate was highest among Hispanic people.
In a separate report, the CDC responded to concerns about deaths being misattributed to COVID-19. The agency took a close look at death certificates, finding that most that listed COVID19 also named other contributing problems. Only about 5% of the death certificates listed only COVID-19, and that was more frequently the case when the person died at home.
The CDC said its review confirms the accuracy of the death count for COVID-19.