Deaths From COVID-19

Abstract

In any year, keeping track of new health trends can be difficult.But this year, the dynamic nature of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has made clarity almost impossible.Declines in mortality, after daily COVID-19-related deaths peaked last spring, initially fueled hope that the worst was over.But following a summer increase in deaths, trends have accelerated even faster.This fall, a million new cases of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, which previously had increased monthly, began appearing weekly; as of December 13, cumulative infections totaled more than 16 million in the United States. 1 Meanwhile, the media regularly report a flood of statistics that can be difficult to contextualize.In this issue of JAMA, the simple, yet powerful, analysis by Woolf et al 2 puts these numbers into perspective.Ranking the once unfamiliar threat of COVID-19 against more familiar illnesses, they compare US mortality from COVID-19 (March-October 2020) to leading causes of death 2 years prior to the pandemic (March-October 2018).The analysis, 2 combined with their prior research on death and life expectancy trends, 2-4 suggest 4 major conclusions.First, COVID-19 ranks as a leading cause of death; at certain times, it is the leading cause of death.Compared with leading causes of death from the same period in 2018, novel COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death for children and adults (697.5 deaths/million), ranking only behind heart disease (1287.7 deaths/million) and cancer (1219.8deaths/million). 2 No age group has been spared, although COVID-19 was not the leading cause of death for the younger age groups.These figures probably underestimate true excess mortality by at least 20%, due, in part, to the indirect effects of the pandemic on non-COVID-19 deaths 2 including the death risk that lethal communicable diseases pose to others.Woolf et al note that the rapidly rising death rates this fall will exceed spring death rates when COVID-19 was the leading cause of death.Between November 1, 2020, and December 8, 2020, the 7-day average for daily COVID-19 deaths nearly tripled-826 to 2226 deaths per day. 2 Daily deaths in the first 13 days of December averaged 2381 per day, 1 already well exceeding the 1900 average daily deaths during the initial peak from April 15 to May 15. 1 On December 9, 2020, deaths reached a record high of 3411, 1 more than 2 per minute and roughly 400 more than the September 11, 2001, attack. 2 Such numbers elevate COVID-19 as a cause of death higher than heart disease and cancer, which, for decades, accounted for 1700 and 1600 deaths per day, respectively. 2umulative COVID-19 deaths in the United States just surpassed 300 000 on December 14. 1 The United States, which

Topics & Concepts