Covid-19 killed hundreds of thousands of people in the United States in 2020, driving a record increase in the death rate and a major drop in life expectancy of nearly two years, according to final 2020 death data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The death rate was about 835 deaths per 100,000 people a 17% increase from 2019, the sharpest increase in more than ten years.

Life expectancy at birth dropped 1.8 years in 2020, from 78.8 years in 2019 to 77 years, the largest decline since World War II.

The year-over-year increase was even larger among minorities, with death rates for Hispanic people going up about three times as much as for White people and death rates for Black people increasing about twice as much as for White people. The death rate for Hispanic men rose nearly 43%, and the death rate for Black men increased 28%, while the death rate for White men increased about 13% from 2019.

In 2020, death rates for Black men was 1,399 deaths per 100,000 people, higher than any other group, while death rates for Hispanic women was 570 per 100,000 people, were the lowest.

Overall, the difference in life expectancy between men and women grew in 2020, with women expected to live almost six years longer than men: 79.9 years, compared with 74.2 years.

Covid-19 was the third leading cause of death overall, accounting for more than 10% of all deaths in 2020 in the United States. Final death data from the CDC shows that Covid-19 caused the death of 350,831 people in the US in that year.