For the second year in a row, Covid was the third-leading cause of death in the U.S., according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released Friday.
Covid was the underlying cause of more than 415,000 deaths in 2021, or 13 percent of the national total, the report found. That’s an increase from 10 percent in 2020. Per capita, Covid death rates increased among every age group in 2021 except those 85 and older.
In both 2020 and 2021, the only conditions that killed more people than Covid were heart disease, which caused 693,000 deaths last year, and cancer, at 605,000 deaths in 2021. The data is provisional, though, so the numbers could change as the CDC collects more information. The Covid tally also doesn’t include 45,000 deaths for which the coronavirus was a contributing factor rather than an underlying cause.
