The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently revealed that COVID-19 was the third-highest cause of death in the United States for 2020.
- The coronavirus outbreak caused 375,000 deaths in 2020, according to the CDC.
- COVID-19 ranked behind heart disease (690,000 deaths) and cancer (598,000) as the leading cause of death in the country.
- Deaths related to COVID-19 have now topped 550,000, per the CDC.
- COVID-19 became one of the top 10 causes of death in the country. It displaced suicide on the list.
CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday this data should be used to help combat COVID-19, according to HuffPost.
- “The data should serve again as a catalyst for each of us to continue to do our part to drive down cases and reduce the spread of COVID-19 and get people vaccinated as quickly as possible,” she said, according to HuffPost.
Per HuffPost, the death rates were “were highest among Black people and American Indian and Alaska Native people.” COVID-19 hit the Hispanic population the hardest, too.
- “Sadly, based on the current state of the pandemic, these impacts have remained in 2021 where we continue to see that communities of color account for an outsize portions of these deaths,” Walensky said.
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The CDC data also showed that the age-adjusted death rate jumped by 15.9% in 2020, which is the first increase of that statistic in three years, according to NPR.