- Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the United States.
- "The virus has killed more than 1,800 Americans almost every day since April 7. That's ahead of heart disease. That's ahead of cancer," Garcetti said during a news briefing.
- On April 8, there were 1,940 COVID-19 deaths compared to 1,774 heart disease deaths, which is typically the leading cause of death in the US.
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Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said on Monday that COVID-19 is now the leading cause of death in the United States.
"This weekend, we learned that un America COVID-19 is the leading cause of death in the United States. The virus has killed more than 1,800 Americans almost every day since April 7. That's ahead of heart disease. That's ahead of cancer," Garcetti said during a news briefing.
According to Live Science, the biggest killers in the US were heart disease which killed 1,774 people a day in 2018 and cancer which killed 1,641 people a day in 2018. The new coronavirus killed more than 1,940 on April 8.
On April 16, The Washington Post reported that between April 6 and April 12, COVID-19 was the second leading cause of death right behind heart disease and accounted for 12,392 deaths. In around four weeks, COVID-19 deaths went from 337 deaths between March 16 to March 22, to over 12,000 deaths between April 6 and April 12, to now being the leading cause of death in America.
However, The Post also added that different areas of the country were dealing with different realities in terms of COVID-19 deaths. In New York state coronavirus deaths were exponentially larger than deaths from other causes. More than 5,200 people died from COVID-19 in New York state April 6 and April 12, compared to the 870 from heart disease, the second leading cause of death. Similar trends were noticed in Louisiana and Washington, DC.
However, those weren't the trends in states like California or Washington. During that same week, while there were 332 coronavirus deaths in California, 1,178 people died from heart disease and another 1,127 people died from cancer.
The numbers of cancer and heart disease deaths are based on the "normal number of deaths" during the time period, based on numbers from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The US currently has close to 800,000 coronavirus cases with over more than 42,900 deaths.
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