COVID-19 — the illness caused by the novel coronavirus spreading across the globe — is now the No. 1 cause of death in the US, where it is killing more people every day than heart disease or cancer, according to a report.
A new graph published this week by Dr. Maria Danilychev, a San Diego-based physician, showed the disease causes 1,970 deaths across the country per day, according to Newsweek.
Meanwhile, the graph shows that 1,774 deaths per day are caused by heart disease and 1,641 by cancer, the mag reported.
Only last week, COVID-19 was the third-leading cause of death, averaging about 748 deaths per day, taking the place of accidents, according to Danilychev’s previous report.
The graph uses data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the daily average causes of death and compares them to Worldometers.info statistics about the deadly bug.
As of early Friday, the US had more than 465,750 coronavirus cases, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. More than 1.4 million cases have been reported globally.
In her graph, Danilychev — a palliative care specialist and clinical research investigator — uses a time-lapse feature that shows how the number of deaths from the illness each day has recently increased.
Before March 20, it had the lowest number of daily deaths compared to other causes listed, averaging about 50 daily.
But two days later, COVID-19’s daily death rate began to surge — passing flu and pneumonia, kidney disease, suicide and liver disease. By the end of March, it was the third-highest killer, according to Newsweek.
Despite the startling statistics, data reports show localized case numbers are leveling off in some of the heaviest-hit areas.
On Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that the overall number of newly hospitalized coronavirus patients in New York state dipped to its lowest level since the Empire State was all but shut down last month.
The Big Apple death toll rose to 4,778 Thursday evening, up from 4,260 the day before, according to city data — though new deaths and hospitalizations are trending down in the city from the record 806 people who died over the course of Tuesday.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said Thursday that early projections estimating between 100,000 to 240,000 deaths from the virus are now less likely to occur, The Hill reported.
Fauci and other members of President Trump’s coronavirus task force are following newer models like one from the University of Washington, which now projects 60,000 fatalities by August, according to the news outlet.
“I think the American public has done a really terrific job just buckling down and doing those physical separations and adhering to those guidelines,” Fauci said.