The coronavirus pandemic will make 2020 the deadliest year in U.S. history.
Although final data will not be available for months, preliminary figures suggest the U.S. recorded more than 3.2 million deaths this year, which is at least 400,000 more than in 2019, a figure that could still rise, according to the Associated Press.
It marks a 15% jump, the largest percentage jump in a year since 1918, when tens of thousands of American soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands died of Spanish flu.
Since Wednesday morning, COVID-19 has killed 322,849 lives in the United States, according to data from Johns Hopkins University, and the country continues to record record highs.
He has sometimes been the number one killer of heart disease and cancer, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believes he may be responsible for many more than previously counted.
An explosion of cases of pneumonia earlier this year may have been the death from COVID-19 that was simply not recognized as such at the beginning of the epidemic, according to Robert Anderson, the CDC official who goes death statistics abroad.
An unexpected number of deaths from certain types of heart and circulatory disease, diabetes and dementia can also be linked to the pandemic, attributed to patients already weakened by these conditions and a decrease in the care they received due to blockages.
Suicide deaths fell in 2019 compared to 2018, but Anderson said the encouraging trend did not appear to have continued this year, an increase attributed to the loneliness of blockages and worsening mental health conditions. existing.
Meanwhile, drug overdose deaths also appear to have risen, with 81,000 recorded during the twelve months ending May, the highest figure ever recorded in a one-year period.
Experts blame the disruption of the pandemic on face-to-face treatment and recovery services, as well as people who abuse drugs while they are alone at home, without anyone being able to call for help.
But perhaps the most important factor is that COVID-19 caused supply problems to distributors, causing them to mix increasingly cheap and deadly fentanyl with heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, experts said.
“I do not suspect that there are a lot of new people who suddenly started using drugs because of COVID. In any case, I think the supply of people who already use drugs is more polluted, ”said Shannon Monnat, a researcher at Syracuse University who studies overdose trends.
With publishing cables