COVID-19 fell out of top 5 mortality causes last year for first time

COVID-19 fell out of the top five causes of death in the U.S. last year for the first time since breaking out, according to a provisional estimate released Thursday.

An analysis of death certificates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the coronavirus killed 49,928 people in 2023, or 11.9 out of every 100,000 people.

That’s down significantly from 186,552 deaths or 44.5 for every 100,000 people in 2022. It’s also down from 416,893 or 104.1 per 100,000 people in 2021 and 350,831 or 85 per 100,000 in 2020, the first year of recorded deaths.

Researchers from the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics said COVID-19 plunged to the 10th leading cause of death last year, falling from third place in 2020 and 2021 and fourth in 2022.

“We will likely continue to see shifts in the leading causes of death, particularly for those causes that saw big changes during the pandemic,” Farida Ahmad, a CDC health scientist, said in an email. “We’ll continue to monitor as we get more data in the following years.”

Heart disease, cancer, unintentional injuries, strokes, chronic lower respiratory diseases, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis all stood ahead of COVID-19 on the list of top 10 mortality causes last year.

Overall, the CDC found the number of deaths nationwide dropped by 6% from 3,279,857 in 2022 to 3,090,582 in 2023.

Ms. Ahmad and CDC statisticians Jodi Cisewski and Robert Anderson published an analysis of the data Thursday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Their article noted that heart disease and cancer were the top two causes of death, respectively, in each year from 2019 to 2023. Both diseases killed well over half a million Americans annually.

Unintentional injuries, including from drug overdoses, traditionally claimed the third spot before COVID-19 displaced it in 2020 and 2021.

In their analysis, the statisticians found drug overdose and alcohol-related deaths surged from 2019 to 2023.

“Increases in drug overdose and alcohol use–related diseases during the pandemic may continue to affect other leading causes, like unintentional injuries and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis,” the CDC statisticians wrote.

The CDC report shows deaths from unintentional injuries surged by 28% from 173,040 in 2019 to 222,518 in 2023 as drug overdoses reclaimed their spot as the nation’s third-leading cause of death.

Over the same period, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis broke into the top 10 for the first time, killing 52,220 people as it passed COVID-19 to claim the ninth spot last year.

Multiple reports have shown increased abuse of alcohol and synthetic opioids, including fentanyl, that started during pandemic lockdowns in March 2020.

Reached for comment, several medical experts not connected with the CDC report said the numbers show the nation’s success in defeating COVID-19.

Some said the findings also underline the need to refocus on mental health issues that have ballooned since the end of pandemic restrictions.

“Now is the time to summon that same energy to battle the addictions that are producing deaths in every category this study examined,” said Keith Humphreys, a Stanford University psychologist and addiction researcher specializing in the opioid crisis.

Physicians who have treated COVID-19 cases attributed the drop in deaths to improved medical care, herd immunity and higher vaccination rates since the early pandemic.

“The most significant aspect of this data is how it illustrates the power of science to quickly tame what was a leading cause of death,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the survival rates of hospitalized COVID-19 patients have vastly improved.

“Now over 95% of Americans have experienced COVID, whether by actual infection, from vaccination or both,” he said. “Thus, we’re more protected.”

According to Dr. Panagis Galiatsatos, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the growing immunity of the U.S. population has contributed to more recent variants of the virus being less lethal than the original strains.

“So over these last few years, we saw our immune memory build-up, which in of itself attenuates the potential severity of the virus, as well as the virus mutating in a way to be more contagious and less lethal,” Dr. Galiatsatos said.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.