Data: COVID-19 New Yorkers' second-leading cause of death in 2020

COVID-19 surpassed cancer in 2020 as the second leading cause of death on Long Island and statewide, trailing only heart disease, while New Yorkers' average life expectancy fell from 81.5 in 2019 to 78.2 in the first year of the pandemic, according to the state health department.

The 2020 Vital Statistics data highlight the unprecedented impact the pandemic had on the health of New Yorkers, particularly the elderly and Hispanics.

For example, the total number of deaths in Nassau County in 2020 reached 14,371, a 31% increase from 10,968 a year earlier, the data shows. In Suffolk, total reported deaths leapt almost 25%, from 12,515 in 2019 to 15,626 in 2020, according to the statistics, which were released Friday by the New York State Department of Health. The death total on Long Island in 2020 was the highest, by a large margin, for any year in the past decade.

Shocking, not surprising

Martine Hackett, associate professor and director of public health programs at Hofstra University, said the dramatic increase in deaths on Long Island is "shocking but not surprising. In addition to the deaths due to COVID in the first year of the pandemic, people who had other health conditions like cancer had delayed health care services. The overall impact that this major disruption in health care caused by the pandemic will likely be reflected in the data for 2021 as well."

From 2011 through 2019, heart disease and cancer ranked one and two, respectively, as Long Islanders' leading causes of death. COVID-19 changed that trajectory, leaving 2,794 dead from the virus in Nassau in 2020 and claiming 2,792 lives in Suffolk, according to the data.

Statewide, the total number of deaths grew by nearly 30% in 2020, from 157,000 to more than 203,000, the figures showed.

But a deeper look into the numbers showed the trends were even worse for specific population sets.

COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in Nassau in 2020 among those 75 and older and among males of that age in Suffolk, according to the data. Statewide, the virus was also the leading cause of death among Hispanics and Asian/Pacific Islander populations.

Pandemic disparity

And while COVID-19 was the second leading cause of deaths for Blacks in New York, it ranked third for the state's white population, underscoring a disparity in how the pandemic struck different populations. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, Blacks represent 17.6% of New York's population while whites stands at 69.1%.

The early stages of the pandemic highlighted inequities in health care, particularly for communities of color, said Dr. Peter Silver, chief quality officer and associate chief medical officer at Northwell Health.

"The reasons for that are really twofold: First was the decreased access to care and secondly an increased incidence of comorbidities of other conditions that would make coming down with COVID a higher risk disease," Silver said. "I'm talking about higher incidence of diabetes ...and hypertension in those communities."

The loss of life from COVID-19, experts said, resulted in the largest decline in life expectancy for New Yorkers in decades, contributing to the reversal of a trend that had most Americans living longer.

The life expectancy at birth for all New Yorkers dropped from 81.5 in 2019 to 78.2 in 2020, a period with no vaccine or treatment to successfully combat COVID-19, according to the state figures, which mirrored a nationwide trend.

"For decades, the United States had experienced gains in the number of years people were expected to live," Hackett said. "And for the last three years, we have experienced a reversal of this trend, with people born today expected to live shorter lives than in previous generations. This is a very concerning trend that reflects not only that elderly people are not living as long as they once did, but younger people are also dying at increased rates."

Former Nassau County Health Commissioner Larry Eisenstein said it's easy to forget how deadly the early days of the pandemic were, with the county renting freezer trucks to hold bodies of those killed by the virus because funeral homes no longer had the necessary storage.

"The key takeaway [from the data] is this was really bad and a lot of people died," said Eisenstein, who now serves as vice president and chief public and community health officer at Catholic Health Systems. "And it really behooves us to invest in protecting ourselves for the future."

By Robert Brodsky

robert.brodsky@newsday.com@BrodskyRobert

Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.