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This is the deadliest year in US history, and deaths are expected to exceed three million for the first time, mainly due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Final mortality data for this year will not be available for months. But preliminary figures suggest the United States is on track to see more than 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.
Deaths in the US are increasing most years, so an annual increase in deaths is expected. But the 2020 figures amount to an increase of about 15 percent and could rise once all deaths for this month are counted.
That would mark the largest percentage jump in a year since 1918, when tens of thousands of American soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands of Americans died in a flu pandemic. Deaths increased 46 percent that year, compared to 1917.
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Covid-19 has killed more than 318,000 Americans and counting. Before it appeared, there was reason to be hopeful about death trends in America.
The nation’s overall death rate dropped somewhat in 2019, due to reductions in deaths from heart disease and cancer. And life expectancy increased slightly, over several weeks, for the second year in a row, according to death certificate data released Tuesday (local time) by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But life expectancy for 2020 could end up falling to three full years, said Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
AP
Romelia Navarro (right) consoles herself as she cries sitting next to the bed of her dying husband, Antonio, who died of Covid-19 in California. Covid-19 has killed more than 318,000 Americans and counting.
The CDC tallied 2,854,838 deaths in the US last year, or nearly 16,000 more than in 2018. That’s pretty good news: Deaths are generally increasing between 20,000 and 50,000 each year, mostly due to aging and a growing population. of the nation.
In fact, the age-adjusted death rate dropped about 1 percent in 2019, and life expectancy increased by about six weeks to 78.8 years, the CDC reported.
“It was actually a pretty good year for mortality,” said Anderson, who oversees the CDC death statistics.
The US coronavirus epidemic has been a major driver of deaths this year, both directly and indirectly.
The virus was first identified in China last year and the first cases in the United States were reported this year. But it has become the third leading cause of death, behind only heart disease and cancer. During certain periods this year, Covid-19 was the number one killer.
Patrick Semansky / AP
Artist Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg walks among thousands of white flags planted in memory of Americans who have died from Covid-19.
But some other types of deaths have also increased.
An explosion of pneumonia cases earlier this year may have been deaths from Covid-19 that were simply not recognized as such early in the epidemic. But there have also been an unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory disease, diabetes and dementia, Anderson said.
Many of them can also be related to Covid. The virus could have weakened patients already struggling with those conditions, or it could have diminished the care they were receiving, he said.
Early in the epidemic, some were optimistic that deaths in car accidents would decrease as people stopped traveling or driving to social events. Data on that is not yet available, but anecdotal reports suggest there was no such decline.
Suicide deaths decreased in 2019 compared to 2018, but preliminary information suggests they have not continued to decline this year, Anderson and others said.
Archive
Before the coronavirus hit, the US was in the midst of the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in its history.
Meanwhile, deaths from drug overdoses got much worse.
Even before the coronavirus hit, the US was in the midst of the deadliest drug overdose epidemic in its history.
Data for all of 2020 is not yet available, but last week the CDC reported more than 81,000 drug overdose deaths in the 12 months ending in May, making it the highest number ever recorded in a period of one year. year.
Experts believe that the interruption of in-person treatment and recovery services due to the pandemic may have been a factor. People are also more likely to use drugs on their own, without the benefit of a friend or family member who can call 911 or administer medication to reverse the overdose.
But perhaps a more important factor is the drugs themselves: Covid-19 caused supply problems for traffickers, so more and more are mixing cheap and deadly fentanyl with heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, experts said.
“I don’t suspect that there are a lot of new people who suddenly started using drugs because of Covid. If anything, I think the supply of people already using drugs is more contaminated, ”said Shannon Monnat, a Syracuse University researcher who studies drug overdose trends.
