Major Causes of Death in Orange County in 2020 – Orange County Register

Many deaths were morbidly predictable in all the ways life in Orange County changed last year. Heart disease and cancer were the first and second major killer diseases of 2020, as in the last few years.

The third was COVID-19, a contagious and unfamiliar newcomer.

Overall, Orange County recorded 2,700 deaths last year compared to the average over the last three years. This is a 13% increase in mortality, State as a whole..

By December 31, about 2,535 people had died of COVID-19, according to the OC. Healthcare agencyIt accounts for about 1 in 10 deaths in Orange County that year.

The last month of 2020 was the pandemic’s most deadly 834 COVID-19 deaths to date. By January 24, the latest date for which data were available, an additional 627 people had died of the disease.

Recent aggregates are expected to increase as individual death records often take weeks to be processed and included in public health data.

Three-quarters of deaths from the coronavirus occur among people over the age of 65.

The main causes of death in 2020 were cancer and heart disease. These are two broad but non-contagious categories that progress slowly compared to COVID-19, which is caused by personal health factors and can be spread by the virus and die within a few days.

Of the 23,800 people who died in Orange County in 2020, about 5,100 (21%) died of heart disease, slightly above the annual average since 2017, according to the California Public Health Service. Mortality dataSum all deaths in the state by major causes in a four-year window.

Last year, cancer deaths were about 4,700 (20%), slightly below the average for the last three years.

In December, more than the sum of cancer and heart disease died from COVID-19 in the worst pandemic surge to date. Public health experts suspect that it will continue until January, as state officials continue to consider the deaths recorded last month.

Silver lining

Andrew Neumer, a professor of public health at the University of California, Irvine, who specializes in mortality, said the large aggregates caused by key categories such as cancer and heart disease are not surprising.

But the data also show that coronavirus and flu Combine with the so-called “eccentric” This winter. The number of deaths from influenza and pneumonia in the fall and winter of 2020 is below the sum of the bad seasons of influenza in the winter of 2017-18.

“The twin epidemic has collapsed,” Neumer said earlier this year, foretelling a mild flu season in other countries. Safety measures that help contain the coronavirus, such as wearing a mask, increasing social distance, and frequent hand washing, can also help prevent the spread of the flu.

State deaths also show that 255 suicides in Orange County in 2020 have fallen from an average of 341 in the last three years. Victim of pandemic mental health And home order.

If the doctor stated in the death certificate that it was the root cause of death, the death was due to COVID-19, Neumer said.

“What’s on the death certificate must have contributed significantly to the person’s mortality rate, so if you include COVID, you can say that COVID was involved in the death,” he said. I did.

For example, if there are two root causes of COVID-19 and heart disease, “the question is which one has the higher priority,” Noymer said. It is the doctor’s responsibility to consider whether the patient is still alive even if he is not infected with the coronavirus.

“The CDC says it intends to put COVID as the root cause in that case,” he said. Otherwise, “they will be alive-thinning their blood every day, but they will be alive.”

Given the number of pandemic deaths in 2020, did COVID-19 take deaths from other categories of illness and end lives that would probably have ended for other causes?

“No,” Neumer said. Thousands more people died last year. It can only be explained by the previously nonexistent coronavirus.

“COVID is primarily removing a series of deaths that will probably occur in the next five to ten years,” he said, probably due to long-term conditions such as cancer and heart disease. Neumer said.

Front line

Doctors, nurses and other staff at Orange County Hospital were at the forefront of life and death more than ever in 2020, but are still in 2021.

Christie Paral, a nurse and emergency room manager at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange, said:

Apart from the avalanche of pandemic patients, one of the complex problems in the emergency room in 2020 was the postponement of people with other illnesses in need of emergency treatment for fear of catching the coronavirus. ..

It didn’t necessarily lead to an increase in deaths at the hospital level, she said, but people arrived sick than they came to the ER earlier, as they did before the pandemic.

“I think there is definitely an increase in illness from people who are avoiding hospitals,” Parral said.