Marin Independent Journal

US deaths fall but not to pre-COVID levels

- By Mike Stobbe

The number of U.S. deaths dropped this year, but there are still more than there were before the coronaviru­s hit.

Preliminar­y data — through the first 11 months of the year — indicates 2022 will see fewer deaths than the previous two COVID-19 pandemic years. Current reports suggest deaths may be down about 3% from 2020 and about 7% vs. 2021.

U.S. deaths usually rise year-to-year, in part because the nation's population has been growing. The pandemic accelerate­d that trend, making last year the deadliest in U.S. history, with more than 3.4 million dying. If current trends continue, this year will mark the first annual decline in deaths since 2009.

It will be months before health officials have a full tally. The October and November numbers are not yet complete and a late-December surge could change the final picture, said Farida Ahmad, who leads mortality surveillan­ce at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

If the decline does hold, it will still be a far cry from where the nation was before the coronaviru­s appeared. This year's count is likely to end up at least 13% higher than what it was in 2019.

“We're (still) definitely worse off than we were before the pandemic,” said Amira Roess, a George Mason University professor of epidemiolo­gy and global health.

Once again, most of the annual change is due to the ebb and flow of COVID-19, which has killed more than 1,080,000 Americans since it first was recognized in the U.S. in early 2020.

This year started off horribly, with about 73,000 COVID deaths in January alone — the third deadliest month from COVID-19 since the pandemic began. For 2022, “the bulk of mortality was concentrat­ed during that omicron wave at the beginning of the year,” said Iliya Gutin, a University of Texas researcher tracking COVID-19 mortality.

Monthly COVID-19 deaths dropped below 4,000 in April and averaged about 16,000 per month through November. The monthly average for 2021 was more than double that.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States