"The spread of COVID-19 has been slowing, but the virus still remained one of the leading causes of death for Americans in 2022, falling from third place to fourth place last year.

 

Among nearly 3.3 million fatalities reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics in 2022, COVID-19 was the underlying cause listed on 186,702 death certificates, substantially down from 416,893 in 2021.

 

That means the virus now ranks behind heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries — a category largely driven by drug overdoses — which each caused the loss of more lives last year."

 

(more)

 

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/covid-19-fell-fourth-leading-cause-of-death-cdc/

 

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm

 

 

The CDC's rankings for causes of death only use the narrower definition where a particular cause of death is found to be the "underlying cause." Those don't count the added cases where COVID or other factors were instead considered a "contributing cause".

 

When counting the death causes listed as "underlying" (meaning primary), the rankings for 2022, as shown in the chart above, were the following:

Heart disease -- 699,659

Cancer -- 607,790

Unintentional Injury -- 218,064

COVID -- 186,702

 

That meant COVID, ranked fourth, was the underlying (primary) cause of about 5.7 percent of ranked deaths for 2022, down from 12 percent or 416,893 underlying cause COVID deaths in 2021.

 

However, the CDC also listed what it called "COVID-19 associated" deaths, which combine the underlying and contributing cause categories. By that measure, the U.S. had 244,986 COVID associated deaths in 2022, down 47% from 2021's figure of 462,193.

 

The COVID associated deaths tally for 2022 accounted for 7.5 percent of the U.S.'s nearly 3.3 million total deaths. The CDC said the final death causes tally for 2022 will be released toward the end of this year.

 

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7218a3.htm