Alcohol-related deaths jump in US

In the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, the number of deaths involving alcohol jumped sharply from previous years, according to a report.

There were 78,927 alcohol-related deaths in 2019 and 99,017 in 2020, according to research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association last week. Those deaths also included motor vehicle crashes that happened as a result of driving under the influence of alcohol.

The spike in alcohol-related deaths in the first year of the pandemic was seen across all age groups. Researchers said the largest increase was in people between 35 to 44 years old with a nearly 40 percent increase, and 25 to 34 years old with a 37 percent increase.

"We're not surprised. It's unfortunate, but we sort of expected to see something like this," said Aaron White, lead author of the study and a neuroscientist at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

"It's not uncommon for people to drink more when they're under more duress, and obviously, the pandemic brought a lot of added stress to people's lives. In addition to that, it reduced a lot of the normal outlets people have for coping with stress, (like) social support and access to gyms."

Gender differences

Although more men have alcohol-related deaths, the rate for women is accelerating.

"These measures have been escalating faster for women. That's one of the things that's been very clear over the last 20 years," White said.

The study analyzed death certificates provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics for people aged 16 and over between 2019 and 2020. The researchers identified all deaths in which alcohol was listed as an underlying cause.

The researchers also looked at the CDC's provisional data for the first half of last year. They found that January 2021 was the month with the highest number of alcohol-related deaths between January 2019 and June 2021.

White also said the increasing rate of deaths involving alcohol reflects increasing alcohol consumption.

"Nationwide, there was about a 3 percent increase in alcohol sales, which is the biggest increase … in 50 years," he said.

Opioid overdose deaths that involved alcohol also increased about 41 percent during the first year of the pandemic, the study said.

The numbers reflected in the study are probably underestimates, White said, because alcohol is not always reflected in a death certificate, even if it is involved with the death.

Agencies contributed to this story.