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Alcohol-related deaths in the US jumped over 25pc in first year of Covid-19 pandemic, study finds
New study finds alcohol-related deaths in the US increased over 25 per cent in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. — Pexels.com pic
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KUALA LUMPUR, March 23 — The number of alcohol-related deaths in the US saw a whopping 25.5 per cent increase in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
The country, which recorded the highest Covid-19 deaths totalling about a million fatalities so far, saw alcohol consumption and related harms jump in 2020.
According to recent research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the number of deaths increased from 78,927 to 99,017 between 2019 and 2020.
The study highlighted that alcohol-related deaths accounted for 2.8 per cent of all deaths in 2019 and three per cent in 2020.
The authors from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism also found that alcohol deaths rose for every age group.
However, the largest change in alcohol-related deaths was among those between 35 and 44, with a nearly 40 per cent increase.
Although the death rate involving alcohol consumption saw an increase prior to the pandemic, it was less rapidly over the past few years.
The study showed that the average annual increase in deaths involving alcohol was 2.2 per cent between 1999 and 2017.
It was found that a total of 2,042 death certificates issued in 2020 listed alcohol and Covid-19 causes of death.
However, only a small proportion of the increase in alcohol-related deaths involved Covid-19 directly.
The authors suggested that possible reasons for the increase in such deaths included pandemic-related stressors, shifting alcohol policies and disrupted treatment access.
The researchers used US mortality data from the National Centre for Health Statistics to compare the numbers and rates of alcohol-related and all-cause deaths among all individuals aged 16 and above in 2019 and 2020.
Provisional data for the first half of 2021 were also obtained from the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research.
In 2020, several reports suggested that alcohol consumption among Americans were on the rise to cope with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdowns.
A report in the Journal of Jama Network Open from September 2020 said American adults were drinking 14 per cent more often during the pandemic.
It found that the increase in the frequency of drinking among women was up 17 per cent compared to 2019.