US: Alcohol-related deaths soared 25% during first year of COVID-19 pandemic

In the United States, about a million individuals have died from COVID-19 in the last two years, although the entire extent of the pandemic's collateral harm is still being calculated.

According to a new study, the number of Americans who died from alcohol-related causes skyrocketed during the first year of the pandemic, as habits were disrupted, support networks strained, and treatment was delayed.

The number of alcohol-related deaths in the United States increased by 25.5 percent between 2019 and 2020, according to a study published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

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This represents a significant increase over previous years; between 1999 and 2017, the average annual percent increase in alcohol-related mortality was 2.2 percent.

In the United States, there were 78,927 alcohol-related deaths in 2019 and 99,017 in 2020.

These deaths also included people killed in car accidents while driving under the influence of alcohol.

Alcohol-related deaths accounted for 2.8 percent of all deaths in 2019, rising to 3% in 2020.

Dr. Aaron White, main author of the study and a neuroscientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, told CNN, "We're not surprised. It's bad, but we sort of expected to find something like this. "

Researchers looked through death certificates from the Centers for Disease Control for people 16 and older and found ones where alcohol was an underlying orcontributing cause, according to the study, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Friday.

This could include alcohol overdoses, liver illness, and car accidents in which the person was inebriated.

(With inputs from agencies)