This year, the annual deaths in the United States will be 20% more because of the on-going pandemic, according to a new study. These additional deaths were reported from March to August which were the peak months for the coronavirus cases to spread and nearly 2/3rd of them have lost their lives to this deadly virus. The complete details of this report are published in the medical journal JAMA.
Dr. Steven Woolf from the Yale School of Public Health is the first author of this study. According to him, the annual deaths in the USA are somehow consistent every year but this year, they have increased by 20% mainly due to the pandemic. It means that COVID-19 is the reason behind these extra deaths confirmed by official documents.
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For this analysis, the research team obtained data on patients from the National Center for Health Statistics and the US Census Bureau. Between the months of March and August, there were nearly 1,336,561 deaths reported in the United States, which is 20% higher than the annual death rate expected every year.
This report is contrary to the reports which suspect that the deaths by COVID-19 are fake and the actual death score is much lesser than what is told in news. This new study shows that those deaths are real and the number of deaths has really increased this year.
Woolf says that some people died without contracting the virus but due to the chaos and disruptions started with this pandemic. This accounts for people who died needing medical emergencies, chronic attacks, and lack of medical facilities during the pandemic. Some of them also include mental health patients who committed suicide or died out of a substance overdose.
Ten US states reported the maximum per-capita rate of these deaths. It includes New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, Delaware, New Jersey, Michigan, Arizona, Rhode Island, Mississippi, and lastly Louisiana. The fluctuates between 22% (reported from Rhode Island) to 65% (in New York). Out of this list, three US states, Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey reported 30% of the total exceeding deaths in the US despite reporting the short period of a pandemic.
Those US states which experiences a high increase in April and were under lockdown and reopened later experienced low cases. Whereas those states which eased the lockdown early and reopened all local businesses witnessed a spike in new coronavirus cases leading to excessive deaths this summer.
Out of the total number of 225,530 excess deaths reported nearly 150,541 (67%) are caused by COVID-19. This report also found that annual deaths in the United States caused by other than COVID-19 have also increased during this summer. However, they were also driven high during the peak cases of coronavirus.
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The deaths by age-related diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s have also been increased to double this year. Despite reporting the accurate facts, this study has its own limitations for example it only overlooked the provisional data which may have some inaccuracies.
But overall, this study studies the deaths as a measure of estimating human loss during this COVID-19 pandemic. These deaths are even higher than US soldiers dying in international disputes and conflicts and even from the swine flu pandemic.
