• COVID-19 was responsible for one in every 12 deaths in the U.S. during the first 18 months of the pandemic, an NIH report finds
• Heart disease and cancer have long been the nation's leading causes of deaths, and remained so through the first half of the pandemic
• Covid deaths among the elderly significantly decreased from 2020 to 2021, most likely because of the widely available vaccines
• America is averaging 101,959 infections and 342 deaths from the virus every day - both figures dropping 10% over the past week

COVID-19 accounted for one in every 12 deaths that occurred in the U.S. during the first 20 months of the pandemic, a new study finds, with the virus being among the top five killers of every age group in the country.

Researchers at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a part of the National Institutes of Health, found that 5.7 million Americans died of all causes from March 2020 to October 2021. Around 700,000 of those deaths - or eight percent - were directly blamed on COVID-19.

The virus may have caused ancillary deaths, though. Conditions like Alzheimer's, heart disease and strokes all had increased mortality during the first 18 months of the pandemic, with some believing the virus prevented many patients from seeking medical care causing them to die preventable deaths.

Heart disease and cancer remained the two leading killers of Americans over the time period, just as they were before Covid.

The mortality of virus has significantly dropped since the time of the study data. The more-mild Omicron variant has snuffed out previous versions of the virus since it took over the world at the end of last year. America is currently averaging 101,959 daily infections and 342 deaths every day, both being drops of around 10 percent over the past week.

Researchers, who published their findings Tuesday in JAMA Internal Medicine, gathered national death certificate data from March 2020 to December 2020, and then from January 2021 to October 2021 for the study. 

Across both study periods, heart disease was the leading killer of Americans being responsible for 1.15 million deaths in only 18 months. Cancer came in second, being the listed cause of death on just over one million death certificates. 

Data was also split into 11 different age cohorts. The most Covid vulnerable age group is generally considered to be the elderly. Researchers found that even among this group the virus was not a leading killer.