The top 3 leading US causes of death in 2020 were heart disease (690,882), cancer (598,932), and COVID-19 (345,323)

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, Researchers from the US National Center for Health Statistics on March 31 published a report in the US CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report describing the leading causes of US deaths in 2020. The authors analyzed provisional mortality data from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System, ranking causes of mortality and contextualizing COVID-19 mortality trends with available demographic and medical data. Based on the provisional data, the estimated age-adjusted death rate in the US increased from 715.2 deaths per 100,000 in 2019 to 828.7 deaths per 100,000 in 2020 (+15.9%). COVID-19 was an underlying or contributing cause of death for 11.3% (377,883) of deaths in 2020; approximately 9% of COVID-19-associated deaths had an underlying cause of death that was not COVID-19. The top 3 leading underlying causes of death in 2020 were heart disease (690,882), cancer (598,932), and COVID-19 (345,323), with the next 7 leading underlying causes of mortality being unintentional injury, stroke, chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer disease, diabetes, influenza and pneumonia, and kidney disease. Previously, suicide was the 10th leading underlying cause of death in the United States but was displaced from the list in 2020 due to mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic.