There were 20% more deaths than expected in the United States from March 1 through August 1, with Covid-19 officially accounting for about two-thirds of them, according to new research published Monday in the medical journal JAMA.
“Although total US death counts are remarkably consistent from year to year, US deaths increased by 20% during March–July 2020,” said the research, authored by Dr. Steven Woolf and colleagues at the Virginia Commonwealth School of Medicine. “Covid-19 was a documented cause of only 67% of these excess deaths.”
There were at least 1,336,561 deaths in the US between March 1 and August 1, the study said – a 20% increase over what would normally be expected.
New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Arizona, Mississippi, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and Michigan were the ten states with the highest per capita rate of excess deaths. The increase in absolute deaths varied from 22% in Rhode Island and Michigan to 65% in New York.
New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts – the three states with the highest death rates – accounted for 30% of US excess deaths, but had the shortest epidemics, according to the researchers.
“States that experienced acute surges in April (and reopened later) had shorter epidemics that returned to baseline in May, whereas states that reopened earlier experienced more protracted increases in excess deaths that extended into the summer,” the researchers said.
Of the approximately 225,530 excess deaths, at least 150,541 – or 67% – of them were attributed to Covid-19.
Analysis found that there were increases in deaths related to causes other than Covid-19, including the US mortality rate for heart disease, which increased between the weeks ending March 21 and April 11, “driven by the spring surge in Covid-19 cases;" and mortality rates for Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, which increased twice.
The second increase, between the weeks ending June 6 and July 25 – “coinciding with the summer surge in sunbelt states.”
“Some states had greater difficulty than others in containing community spread, causing protracted elevations in excess deaths that extended into the summer,” the authors said.
They also added that excess deaths attributed to something other than Covid-19 could be a reflection of deaths from unrecognized or undocumented cases or deaths among noninfected patients who faced disruptions caused by the pandemic.
The study did have some limitations, including that it relied on provisional data, inaccuracies in death certificates, and assumptions that were applied to the model.