Coronavirus caused two-thirds of US excess deaths: study

'The enforcement of mask mandates and social distancing is really important if we are to avoid these surges and major loss of life'

The U.S. saw 20% more deaths than expected from March to August, 67% of which were attributed to COVID-19, according to new research.

Researchers from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and Yale University published findings on Tuesday in JAMA, in which they analyzed death data from the National Center for Health Statistics and US Census Bureau.

“Although total U.S. death counts are remarkably consistent from year to year, U.S. deaths increased by 20% during March-July 2020,” study authors wrote. “COVID-19 was a documented cause of only 67% of these excess deaths.”

“Contrary to skeptics who claim that COVID-19 deaths are fake or that the numbers are much smaller than we hear on the news, our research and many other studies on the same subject show quite the opposite,” lead author Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of VCU’s Center on Society and Health, wrote in a university news release.

During the timeframe under study, there were over 1.3 million deaths in the U.S., and 225,530 excess deaths (150,541 of which were attributed to COVID-19).

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, there are at least 215,549 reported COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.

There was a statistically significant rise in deaths tied to causes other than COVID-19, like heart disease and dementia during certain weeks, some of which researchers noted coincided with surges in coronavirus cases.