COVID-19 killed far fewer Americans in 2023 than 2022, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The percentage of people who died from the disease dropped nearly 69 percent last year, and COVID-19 was listed as the 10th leading cause of death compared to being the fourth in 2022.
In 2020, COVID-19 altered the rankings of leading causes of death substantially. But it was documented as the underlying or contributing cause of only 76,446 deaths in 2023, just 1.6 percent of all deaths for the year compared to 5.7 percent in 2022.
The COVID-19 death rate decreased for all age groups and all racial and ethnic groups, though people ages 85 and up still represented an outsized share.
In a shift from the previous two years, white people had the highest death rate last year: about 20 out of every 100,000 people. From 2020 to 2022, COVID-19 death rates were highest among American Indian and Alaska Natives, CDC found.
Overall, fewer than 3.1 million people died in 2023, a 6 percent decrease from 2022.
During the peak of the pandemic in 2021, COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in the country. But as more people built up immunity through vaccinations and infections, it has fallen precipitously.
The leading causes of death in 2023 were heart disease, cancer, and “unintentional injury,” which are largely driven by drug overdoses. The death rate due to unintentional injuries increased 26 percent from 2019 to 2023. Those were the same top three from 2022.
Deaths from heart disease decreased in 2023 compared with 2022, but deaths from cancer increased, from more than 608,000 in 2022 to more than 613,000 in 2023. Still, the cancer death rate has declined steadily from pre-pandemic rates.
In an editorial published in JAMA that accompanied the release, CDC researchers said the pandemic is still having an impact even though deaths directly attributed to COVID-19 have dropped.
“Increases in drug overdose and alcohol use–related diseases during the pandemic may continue to affect other leading causes, like unintentional injuries and chronic liver disease and cirrhosis,” they wrote.
The report relied on death certificates from 2019 through 2023. The data are provisional and could change when final numbers are released.
