2020 was deadliest year in US history, CDC finds

The United States had its deadliest year in its history in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic caused a 15 percent increase in the country’s death rate, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention will announce, two senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the matter told US media.

According to Press TV, more than 3 million people died in the US in 2020, 344,851 of which from the coronavirus, the CDC data shows, with COVID-19 being the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will announce these results in an upcoming issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, US media reports said Wednesday.

The upcoming report will mark the first time the CDC has publicly acknowledged that the US death rate spiked last year and that COVID-19 played a role in the increase.

The 2020 increase in the US fatalities is the largest since 1918 — when, in the midst of World War I, hundreds of thousands of people died of a flu.

Former President Donald Trump was under fire for publicly downplaying the threat of the pandemic when it broke out in the US in late February 2020, and his handling of the COVID-19 crisis.

More than 529,000 people have died of COVID-19 in the US as of Thursday morning. About 128,000 of those deaths occurred after President Joe Biden took office.

This week, Wyoming has become the latest US state to end mandatory face coverings, joining many Republican-led states whose governors have defied President Joe Biden's administration's COVID-19 guidelines.

Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon announced that as off March 16 the statewide mask mandate will end, and restaurants, theaters and gyms will resume operations. Masks will continue to be required in schools.

ME