As coronavirus ravages the U.S. population, the disease may be taking uninfected people with it.
More people died from March through May this year than died last year, even after stripping out the numbers of people who have succumbed to COVID-19, according to a new study out of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson and internal medicine professor Janet Jokela teamed up to analyze U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. They found the death rate in several demographics outpaced the same period for 2019, corresponding to the first three months of the pandemic in the U.S.
The analysis revealed “a significant increase in deaths over previous years — and not just from COVID-19” when deaths attributed to the coronavirus were removed from the totals, the researchers said in a study published in the journal Public Health.
“We know that the pandemic is selectively taking lives,” Jacobson said in a statement. “It also seems to be causing ancillary deaths that are not directly caused by COVID-19, but are a consequence of the fact that we have COVID-19 in our society, in our health care system, in our jobs, in our lives.”
This echoed the results of an earlier study that looked at the overall death rate from March through July 2020 as compared to the same period in 2019, and found a marked increase not entirely explained by COVID statistics.
That study, led by researchers at Virginia Commonwealth University and published in the October in the Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested that for every two deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S., a third American dies as a result of the pandemic. While the researchers found that deaths increased 20% between March 1 and Aug. 1 compared to previous years, only 67% of those could be tied to COVID-19.
Even ruling out the possibility that at least some of those deaths could have been from unrecognized or undiagnosed cases of COVID-19, according to a review of cardiac deaths in several states conducted in July by The Washington Post, such findings indicate that many patients with serious conditions may have died by delaying or foregoing care during the height of the pandemic at the time.
It’s not just lives that the pandemic is taking. It may also be contributing to an extra layer of disability and illness. The October study found not just ancillary deaths but also pointed to less lethal upheavals caused by the pandemic, such as disrupted chemotherapy for cancer patients and women delaying mammograms at the cost of potential early breast cancer detection, that could contribute to premature death in the years to come, said Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of VCU’s Center on Society and Health.
“And death is only one measure of health,” Woolf said in a statement about the VCU study. “Many people who survive this pandemic will live with lifelong chronic disease complications. Imagine someone who developed the warning signs of a stroke but was scared to call 9-1-1 for fear of getting the virus. That person may end up with a stroke that leaves them with permanent neurological deficits for the rest of their life.”
Either way, as infections, death rates and hospitalizations skyrocket across the U.S., the trend is only going to continue, the Illinois researchers said — and we should be concerned. Deaths have already passed the 250,000 mark, and the pandemic is showing no sign of slowing down.
“Although we don’t know why, deaths increased to a greater degree than expected. As someone who has spent their career in medicine and public health, this concerns me,” Jokela said in the Illinois researchers’ statement. “The concern is that excess deaths will continue to occur during the pandemic, whether it’s because people are delaying care for other conditions or because some COVID-19 deaths are going undetected. This is a phenomenon that requires ongoing monitoring and investigation.”
