US deaths involving alcohol increased 25% during COVID-19 pandemic, NIH study finds 

Alcohol-related deaths in the United States surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as pandemic stressors led to an increase in substance abuse that will have long-lasting impact on the nation.

Researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), found that alcohol related deaths jumped 25 percent during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The pandemic caused an uptick of substance abuse of all kinds in America, with social isolation and disruptions of treatment making it easier for some to spiral.

There was also a notable sure in drug overdose deaths over the past year, another worrying trend that appeared during the pandemic last year.

‘Deaths involving alcohol reflect hidden tolls of the pandemic,’ researchers wrote.

‘Increased drinking to cope with pandemic-related stressors, shifting alcohol policies, and disrupted treatment access are all possible contributing factors.’

Researchers, who published their findings Friday in JAMA, gathered data from the National Center for Health Statistics, a part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for the study.

The NIH team gathered mortality data from 2019 through the first half of 2021, and compared monthly and annual death rates from alcohol related causes. 

Any death that was directly caused by alcohol – via a cause like liver poisoning – or where alcohol was a contributing cause – a person getting dying of an accident while drunk – were classified as alcohol related. 

In 2019, a total of 78,927 deaths caused by alcohol were recorded. There was rarely any month-to-month fluctuation, with all sitting in the 6,000 to 7,000 range.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic officially began in March 2020, deaths related to alcohol were already rising that year.

In January 2020, two months before the virus really took hold in the lives of Americans, there were upwards of 7,000 U.S. alcohol deaths, a sharp increase from January 2019.

After a dip in February – which also occurred the previous year – alcohol-related deaths began to rocket.

In 2020, 99,017 alcohol deaths were recorded, a 25 percent jump from the previous year.

The increase in alcohol related deaths has been tied to pandemic related stressors and disruption of some addiction treatment (file photo)

December – one of the pandemic’s most brutal months so far, was also the month with the most deaths during the year, eclipsing 9,000.

Alcohol is not the only vice that caused a surge of U.S. deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. recorded 105,752 deaths between September 2020 to 2021, the most recently available data from the CDC.

The figure is a 16 percent increase over the same period in the previous year, a surge blamed on disruptions to treatment and social isolation caused by the virus.

Experts warn that there is no guarantee that as the pandemic ends this issue will resolve itself. 

‘Whether alcohol-related deaths will decline as the pandemic wanes, and whether policy changes could help reduce such deaths, warrants consideration,’ they wrote.

They also noted that other studies have found an increase in needs for liver transplants due to alcoholism, an increase in alcohol withdrawal cases and reports of people using drinking to cope with pandemic-induced stress.