Between the first and second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, excess deaths decreased in large metropolitan counties and increased in rural counties in the United States, according to a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and The University of Pennsylvania (UPenn).
New excess mortality estimates show increases in US rural mortality during second year of COVID-19 pandemic medicalxpress.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from medicalxpress.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Published in the journal JAMA Network Open, a new study found that disparities in US COVID death rates between Black and White adults narrowed substantially from the first to the second year of the pandemic, from 339 deaths to 45 deaths per 100,000 people in 2021, after accounting for age. But this sharp decline mostly resulted from an increase in COVID deaths among White people, as well as a geographical shift in mortality from large, urban cities to rural and smaller metropolitan areas, rather than from decreases in deaths among the Black population.
Andrew Stokes, Boston University; Dielle Lundberg, Boston University; Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, University of Minnesota, and Rafeya Raquib, Boston University