U.S. saw record jump of 16 pct in death rate in 2020: media

NEW YORK, April 24 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. death rate in 2020, which hiked 16 percent from 2019 mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was the highest above normal since the early 1900s, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

"A surge in deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic created the largest gap between the actual and expected death rate in 2020 -- what epidemiologists call 'excess deaths,' or deaths above normal," said the paper.

Since the 1918 flu pandemic, the country's death rate has fallen steadily. But last year, "the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted that trend, in spite of a century of improvements in medicine and public health," said the paper.

In 2020, the United States saw a record of 3.4 million deaths nationwide and the largest single-year surge in the death rate since federal statistics became available, even more than the 12 percent jump during the 1918 flu pandemic.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 10 percent of the deaths last year can be directly attributed to COVID-19, which overtook other leading causes of death -- like chronic lower respiratory diseases and unintentional injuries, such as car accidents and overdose deaths -- to become the third biggest killer, after heart disease and cancer.

COVID-19 has now claimed more than half a million lives in the United States. The total number of COVID-19 deaths so far is on track to surpass the toll of the 1918 pandemic, which killed an estimated 675,000 nationwide.