Deaths from influenza and pneumonia in American adults fell by 29.2 percent over a quarter century, from 63,006 in 1999 to 44,625 in 2023. Every adult age group shared in the improvement except one. Adults aged 55 to 64 were the only group with a statistically significant rise in crude death rate, at an average of 0.8 percent per year.
The finding comes from an analysis of the CDC WONDER death records by researchers in China, published in the journal Medicine and reported by CIDRAP. The national age-adjusted rate fell from 35.9 to 16.5 deaths per 100,000 residents, an average decline of 3.2 percent a year.
