Final mortality data for this year will not be available for several months. But preliminary numbers suggest the United States is on track to see over 3.2 million deaths this year, or at least 400,000 more than in 2019.

US deaths have been on the rise for most of the years, so some annual increase in deaths was expected. But the numbers for 2020 are a jump of about 15% and could climb even higher once all deaths for that month (December) are counted.

This will be the largest percentage jump in a single year since 1918, when tens of thousands of American soldiers died in World War I and hundreds of thousands of Americans died from a flu pandemic. The death rate that year was 46% higher than in 1917.

Life expectancy could be as much as three years down by 2020, says Robert Anderson of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to 1917.

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