The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Thursday that COVID-19 has become the 10th leading cause of death in the United States in 2023. It remained in fourth place in 2022.
Heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries, categories of death that have risen sharply in recent years, mainly due to drug overdoses, remain the top three causes of death. Strokes, which was in fifth place before the pandemic, rose to fourth place.
"In 2020, COVID-19 significantly changed the ranking of leading causes of death. Since then, COVID-19 mortality has declined," researchers from the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics said in an article published Thursday in the journal JAMA. In 2020, the first year of the pandemic, COVID-19 became the third leading cause of death in the United States, surpassed by heart disease and cancer.
The number of deaths from COVID-19 has since decreased, mainly because many of the surviving population have been vaccinated or have immunity to past infections.
CDC officials previously indicated that the sharp decline in COVID-19 deaths could even put it in the top 10 for suicide deaths last year, but suicides take a long time to report, and it was the 10th leading cause of death before the suicide deaths were announced.
According to CDC provisional statistics, suicide will remain 11th in 2023. The number of suicide deaths reported in 2023 was 49,303, a slight decrease from 2022.
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| Data for 2019-2022 are final. Data for 2023 are provisional. |
COVID-19 was listed as the primary "underlying" cause of 49,928 deaths in 2023, less than one-third of the 186,552 deaths in 2022 where COVID-19 was the primary cause.
Including deaths where COVID-19 was listed as "contributing" to another cause of death, the CDC said at least 76,446 deaths were "associated" with the virus last year. In March, the CDC said "COVID-19 is increasingly a contributing, rather than a primary (underlying) cause of death."COVID-19 deaths decreased in 2023 compared to 2022 for all demographic groups. COVID-19-related deaths remain highest among African Americans compared to other races and ethnicities. Among the age groups surveyed by the agency, the proportion of seniors aged 85 and older remains the highest. Last winter's peak was lower than the previous winter wave, so COVID-19 deaths may be lower this year. Some trends suggest this summer's COVID-19 wave is reaching higher infection rates than last summer's peak, but the CDC said the numbers tracking severe disease are still better than the previous wave.
"Despite the significant amount of COVID-19 circulating, emergency department visits and hospitalizations are lower than in previous years, which is a good thing," said CDC Director Dr. Dominique. Mandy Cohen spoke at an American Medical Association webinar on Tuesday. Cohen said the agency's efforts to promote COVID-19 vaccinations this fall will focus on the most at-risk groups, primarily seniors and nursing home residents, as well as doctors providing vaccinations. "We want to continue to protect each other, especially those who are most at risk," Cohen said.
