In all, more than 3 million people died in the United States in 2020, the agency found.
The next report will mark the first time the agency has publicly acknowledged that the national death rate skyrocketed last year and that Covid-19 played an important role in the increase. According to CDC data, the 2020 increase is the biggest since 1918 – when, in the middle of the First World War, hundreds of thousands of people died of the flu. In comparison, the death rate in 2019 decreased by 1.2 percent compared to the number of victims in 2018.
The report was sent out for review within the CDC, the sources said, as the agency runs to formalize further studies on Covid-19 deaths in 2020. Senior officials at the agency’s Atlanta headquarters are also eager to showcase the work that the CDC is doing to better understand how the virus has affected black communities.
The Associated Press reported in December that preliminary US mortality data indicated that the US was on track to record the most lethal year on record, with a 15% increase in the death rate. The CDC’s next MMWR report will formalize this analysis.
The CDC released some mortality data on Covid-19 that indicate that non-Hispanic blacks are almost twice as likely to contract the virus compared to white people. Hispanics are 2.3 times more likely to die and American Indians and Alaska Natives are 2.4 times more likely to die.
The MMWR report is the first in a series of upcoming CDC reports focusing on Covid-19 deaths.
The authorities are finalizing a comprehensive and separate report on mortality during the pandemic, but are still working on delays in reporting by state health agencies. Although most states have sent information to the health agency about more than 90 percent of virus deaths, several states are weeks behind, according to another senior government official. The federal government and state health departments across the country are also working to analyze hundreds of thousands of “excess deaths” in the past year – or the difference between the number of deaths seen in 2020 versus 2019.
The mortality study will be based on a recently released report that showed that life expectancy in the U.S. has dropped an entire year as a result of Covid-19 from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77.8 years. The report said that, during that period, life expectancy decreased by 0.8 years for non-Hispanic whites, 1.9 years for Hispanic individuals and 2.7 years for non-Hispanic blacks.
The data used for this report was from January to June 2020. The agency plans to launch a life expectancy study within the larger mortality study that extracts data for the entire year 2020.
More than 528,000 people died of Covid-19 in the United States, according to official records. About 128,000 of those deaths occurred after Biden took office. Although the death rate is decreasing, the number of Covid-19 cases remains high in jurisdictions across the country. Federal health officials are asking Americans to follow health restrictions, such as wearing masks and social distance while in public, even after vaccination.