In five U.S. states hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic and New York City, there were 8,300 more deaths from heart conditions than there would have been usually from March through May, a new analysis conducted by The Washington Post shows.
The Post gathered data on select causes of death by state between 2014 and early 2020 from the National Center for Health Statistics. They used a model previously developed by a research team led by New Haven, Conn.-based Yale School of Public Health to estimate the number of deaths that would typically be expected from March 1 to May 30. Read more about the methodology here.
The Post focused their analysis on Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York state and New York City. The combined number of excess deaths, or deaths above the number normally expected at a specific time during the year, in the five states and New York City was about 75,000 from March through May. Heart disease was a major driver of those excess deaths, excluding deaths officially attributed to COVID-19, the Post reports.
In New York City alone, there were 4,700 excess deaths from heart disease, nearly four times that of any other jurisdiction the Post studied.
"This data underlines the importance of not letting our health systems get to the point where they are so overwhelmed that it spills over and affects people with other medical conditions in our community," Nahid Bhadelia, MD, medical director of Boston University School of Medicine's Special Pathogens Unit, told the Post.
Read the full analysis here.