Heart disease deaths jumped four per cent in 2020, after years of declines
The jump undoes around five years of progress against the US’s leading killer
Pandemic lockdowns disrupted medical care for millions of Americans
Deaths from other conditions like Alzheimer’s, cancer and diabetes rose as well
Heart disease deaths increased in 2020 for the first time in a decade – with a rise so dramatic it reversed five years of progress fighting America’s leading killer.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) led study found that 325 of every 100,000 Americans died of heart disease in 2020 – a four per cent rise from 2019.
This figure ends a decades-long trend of heart disease deaths going down in the US, and brings back mortality rate figures to where they were in 2015 – losing progress.
Lockdowns around the country restricted Americans’ access to medical care, leading to thousands of ancillary deaths from conditions other than Covid.
Heart disease is the leading killer of Americans and remained so throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
The CDC reports that the disease killed 696,962 people in 2020, nearly double the 350,000 deaths caused by Covid itself.
Death rates from heart disease had been declining in the US since data first started to be tracked in the 1990s, the researchers write.