Alcohol-related deaths soar in first year of pandemic, study shows

WASHINGTON, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Alcohol-related deaths soared during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, a recent study has revealed.

Alcohol-related deaths spiked between 2019 and 2020 from 78,927 to 99,017, while deaths from other causes had smaller increases, according to the research published on Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The research found that alcohol-related deaths accounted for 2.8 percent of all deaths in 2019 and 3.0 percent in 2020.

The number and rate of alcohol-related deaths went up some 25 percent between 2019 and 2020, the first year of the pandemic, it showed.