Deaths among older adults with dementia fell starkly in nursing homes and long-term care centers after COVID-19 vaccinations became available, yet remained high for those living at home, according to a new study led by UC San Francisco.
The nationwide study published July 17, 2023 in JAMA Neurology, is the first to use data from 2019 to 2022 to quantify “excess” deaths – or those above what would have been anticipated had there been no pandemic – taking into account age, sex, racial and ethnic groups, as well as the settings where people died.
In the first year, there were 509,179 dementia-related deaths in the U.S. among people 65 and older, which the researchers estimated was 94,688 more than would be expected in that population if the pandemic had not occurred. In the second year, the number of excess deaths dropped by 77% to 21,586.
The decline in mortality shows people with dementia generally benefited from the COVID-19 vaccines that became available in December of 2020, as well as from new treatments.
Dementia deaths declined in every age, sex, racial and ethnic group evaluated among those in long-term care and nursing homes. But deaths did not decline nearly as much for those who remained at home. Among the home-based population, there were 34,487 excess deaths in the first year of the pandemic. That decreased by just 16% to 28,804 in the second year.