Deaths in Colorado in 2022 dropped from the high point set a year earlier, but still haven’t returned to pre-pandemic levels.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment reported 46,751 people died in 2022, down from 48,284 in 2021. In comparison, 39,318 people died in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.
The improvement was largely due to fewer people dying of COVID-19 than in 2021. Deaths from the virus dropped by more than 3,000, but were partially offset by more people dying of heart disease; cancer; influenza and pneumonia; chronic lower respiratory diseases, such as emphysema; and transportation accidents.
Colorado and the rest of the country may still be seeing some effects from the pandemic, when people delayed care and adopted less-healthy lifestyles, said David Rojas-Rueda, an assistant professor at the Colorado School of Public Health and Colorado State University. It’s also worth noting that some growth in deaths from causes like heart disease is expected, as the population grows and ages, he said.
“Next year, things, I hope, will improve,” he said.
The picture may be brighter after adjusting for changes in the population, though that won’t be certain until the Colorado State Demography Office releases its 2022 numbers later this summer. Based on the preliminary estimates, death rates for heart disease, cancer, chronic lower respiratory diseases and suicide appeared to be lower than in 2019.
Overdose deaths remained well above pre-pandemic levels, though they dropped from their 2021 high point. That trend appeared to persist even after adjusting for population growth and aging.
Nationwide, the number of deaths also dropped in 2022, though it remained above pre-pandemic levels, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As in Colorado, a reduction in deaths from COVID-19 was the biggest factor, though deaths in accidents also decreased for the country as a whole. Overdose deaths appeared to be leveling out in 2022, though that was driven by decreases in only eight states.
It’s not clear yet if life expectancy started to rebound in 2022. In most wealthy countries, it dropped in 2020, but regained that ground in 2021. In the United States, life expectancy continued to fall in the second year of the pandemic.
Excess deaths remained high in 2022, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. The worst point was in late January 2022, on the tail end of the omicron wave, when more than 24,000 more people died than would have been expected based on trends before the pandemic.
The gap narrowed in the spring, but widened again in the summer and fall. In the last week of December, the country still had about 11,000 more deaths than expected. While excess deaths can have any cause, they’ve typically risen when COVID-19 waves were cresting, suggesting a significant portion were caused by the virus, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation report.
What’s perhaps most worrisome in Colorado is a rise in deaths from causes that are largely preventable, such as traffic accidents and diabetes complications, Rojas-Rueda said. But another way of looking at it is that those problems can be solved, both by people taking measures to protect themselves and by societal changes, such as better road design, he said.
“These are things that should not happen and can be modified,” he said.
Top causes of death in Colorado in 2022
Heart disease: 8,371 (up 3.7% from 2021)
Cancer: 8,321 (up 3.2%)
Accidents other than overdoses: 2,649 (up 5.2%)
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 2,461 (up 6.9%)
COVID-19: 2,261 (down 57.3%)
Strokes and cerebrovascular diseases: 2,093 (up 2.4%)
Alzheimer’s disease: 1,870 (up 5.1%)
Accidental overdoses: 1,595 (down 5.1%)
Suicide: 1,287 (down 6.1%)
Diabetes: 1,210 (up 0.4%)
Chronic liver disease and cirrhosis: 1,208 (down 2.0%)
All causes: 46,751 (down 3.2%)
Source: Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment
