Alcohol-Associated Deaths Surged During First 12 Months of CCP Virus Pandemic: Study

Alcohol bottles, with their contents replaced with colored water, sit on a shelf in the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in Bethesda, Md., on Dec. 19, 2014. Cliff Owen/AP Photo

The number of Americans who died of alcohol-associated causes throughout the first 12 months of the COVID-19 pandemic has increased dramatically, according to a recent study.

The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on March 18, revealed that 99,017 U.S. citizens died of alcohol-related causes in 2020—a 25.5 percent increase from the 78,927 deaths documented in 2019.