This may be one of the worst years in U.S. history as data suggests that the country will pass the three million mark in terms of total yearly deaths for 2020.

A report on Associated Press revealed that although the final mortality numbers will not be available for months, experts already have preliminary numbers that suggest that the country may be bound to see more than 3.2 million deaths just for 2020.

The usual increase that experts see in terms of annual deaths has been between 20,000 to 50,000 every year. Causes of death would include a growing population and aging. However, for 2020, experts predict that the final tally would add 400,000 more to the numbers in 2019. The jump in death rate was about 15% and it can still go up the moment that deaths from the current month would be added.

The projected deaths will be the highest single-year leap in percentage since 1918. At the time of the Spanish flu, tens of thousands of soldiers also died in World War I. There were hundreds of thousands of Americans who died during the pandemic. The death rate jumped by 46 percent in 1918, compared to the rate in 1917.

Robert Anderson, the Chief of the Mortality Statistics Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that life expectancy in the current year could end up dropping by as much as three years. Before the pandemic, like in 2019, the mortality rate already fell, thanks to the reduction in cancer deaths and heart disease.

For this year though, the coronavirus pandemic has been a major factor in increasing the death rate, whether directly, or indirectly. COVID-19 also became the third leading cause of death, with cancer and heart disease taking the top two spots. However, experts noted that there were periods when the leading cause of death was COVID-19.

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Coronavirus deaths at all-time-high. Photo: Pixabay

Aside from heart disease, cancer, and COVID-19, the CDC noted other causes from a specific type of heart disease, and also diabetes, and dementia. There is a possibility that those may also be related to coronavirus. Anderson mentioned that coronavirus may have weakened patients who were already suffering from these conditions or diminished the care that they have been getting.

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