Excess Deaths and the Great Pandemic of 2020
Howard Bauchner, Phil Fontanarosa
Abstract
Two new reports in JAMA provide updated estimates regarding the mortality associated with the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in the US. In a research letter by Woolf and colleagues, the authors update their analysis of the number of "excess" deaths in the US related to COVID-19 and other causes from March 1 through August 1, 2020. he authors report that during this 5-month period, a total of 1 336 561 deaths occurred in the US, an estimated 20% increase compared with the number of expected deaths, and representing 225 530 excess deaths. 2 Approximately 67% of these excess deaths were attributable directly to COVID-19, whereas excess deaths attributed to other causes also could have been related to the pandemic in general.