COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the United States in 2020, behind heart disease and cancer, according to a new study of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published on Wednesday.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused approximately 375,000 deaths in the United States during 2020. The COVID-19 death rate was the highest among Hispanics, according to the study.
COVID-19 death rates were the lowest among children aged 1 to 4 years and 5 to 14 years, and the highest among those aged over 85 years. Meanwhile, the age-adjusted COVID-19 associated death rate among males was higher than that among females, according to the study.
The total number of deaths occurred in the country in 2020 was 3,358,814, an increase of 15.9 percent over the previous year, according to the CDC.
The deadliest weeks of 2020 were at the beginning of the pandemic in April and then in the middle of the holiday surge in late December, the study showed.
