The United States death rate decreased by 3.8% in 2024 as COVID fell out of the top 10 leading causes of death for the first time in four years, new provisional federal data shows.

The overall rate declined from 750.5 per 100,000 people in 2023 to 722 per 100,000, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

This marks the lowest death rate recorded since 2020, during the first full year of the COVID-19 pandemic, and follows declines that began in 2022.

The report also found that overall deaths fell from 3.09 million in 2023 to 3.07 million in 2024.

Additionally, the report showed the three leading causes of death stayed the same from 2023 to 2024, with heart disease as the leading cause, followed by cancer

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