July 02, 2026
Thom Carroll/For PhillyVoice
The overall U.S. death rate fell last year, but flu deaths were up, partly due to a drop in vaccination.
The U.S. death rate has dropped to its lowest level since the federal government began tracking it more than 100 years ago. The decline is driven partly by a decrease in deaths related to COVID-19 and drug overdoses.
Last year, the overall death rate was 689.2 deaths per 100,000 people, down 4.6% from 722.1 in 2024, a provisional report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows. The death rate was down across every age group. It also was down across most demographic groups.
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But influenza and pneumonia-related deaths were up 17% in 2025 to 56,511. For the first time since 2020, they were among the top 10 causes of death in the United States.
"The flu season, especially in January and February of 2025, was severe, leading to a lot of flu deaths," Farida Ahmad, a health scientist at the CDC and lead author of the study, told Reuters.
A drop in the number of people getting annual flu shots may have contributed to a rise in flu deaths and may be partly due to growing vaccine skepticism, spurred by policy changes and statements from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Earlier this year, the Trump administration dropped federal recommendations that most children get annual flu vaccines as part of an overhaul to the childhood vaccine schedule, but the revised schedule has been blocked by a federal judge. Kennedy also has said that trouble with his voice is related to flu shots – a claim that health experts say is not backed by science.
Under Kennedy, HHS also has moved to remove the preservative thimerosal from flu shots. Kennedy and anti-vaccination advocates have linked autism to the preservative, despite the fact that robust research does not support these claims.
"We're seeing nationally less trust for vaccines than we did in the past, and that's what most of us in epidemiology and public health think is the predominant reason for lack of vaccination," Dr. Geeta Sood, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, told the Wall Street Journal.
Though the death rate was down overall, Black people were still disproportionately affected with a 1.3 higher mortality rate – higher than any other group.
Also, long-persistent disparities between men and women continued with a rate of 811 deaths per 100,000 men and 583 deaths per 100,000 women.
The death rate numbers are provisional and may be revised as more data is collected, the CDC said.
