U.S. population grew at record low rate in 2021, in part due to COVID-19

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) – The United States’ population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year on record as the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the more subdued growth the country has experienced in recent years, the U.S. Census Bureau said.

“The slow rate of growth can be attributed to decreased net international migration, decreased fertility, and increased mortality due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Census Bureau said on Tuesday.

The year 2021 is the first time since 1937 that the U.S. population grew by fewer than 1 million people, reflecting the lowest numeric growth since at least 1900, when the Census Bureau began annual population estimates.

The population of the United States increased in the past year by 392,665, or 0.1%, according to the U.S. Census Bureau Vintage 2021 Population Estimates released on Tuesday.

Slower population growth has been a trend in the United States for several years, the result of decreasing fertility and net international migration, combined with increasing mortality due to an aging population.

Between 2020 and 2021, the population of 33 U.S. states increased. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia lost population. Eleven of those 18 areas that lost population had losses of 10,000 people or more, the figures released on Tuesday showed.

“Apart from the last few years, when population growth slowed to historically low levels, the slowest rate of growth in the 20th century was from 1918-1919 amid the influenza pandemic and World War One,” Luke Rogers, chief of the Census Bureau’s population estimates branch, said.

Since April 1, 2020 (Census Day), the nation’s population increased from 331,449,281 to 331,893,745, a gain of 0.13%, the figures showed.

The United States’ official death toll from the coronavirus outbreak has been by far the highest in the world with over 800,000 deaths recorded in the country from the disease, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

World must prepare for inevitable next flu pandemic, WHO says

FILE PHOTO: A logo is pictured on the World Health Organization (WHO) headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, November 22, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse

By Kate Kelland

LONDON (Reuters) – The world will inevitably face another pandemic of flu and needs to prepare for the potential devastation that could cause, and not underestimate the risks, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Outlining a global plan to fight the viral disease and get ahead of a potential global outbreak, the WHO said the next influenza pandemic “is a matter of when not if”.

“The threat of pandemic influenza is ever-present,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO’s director-general, said in a statement. “We must be vigilant and prepared; the cost of a major influenza outbreak will far outweigh the price of prevention.”

The world’s last flu pandemic was caused by the H1N1 virus, which spread around the world in 2009 and 2010. Studies of that pandemic found that at least one in five people worldwide were infected in the first year, and the death rate was 0.02 percent.

Global health experts and the WHO warn there is a risk that a more deadly flu virus will one day jump from animals to people, mutate and infect many hundreds of thousands of people.

Flu viruses are multiple and ever-changing, and they infect around a billion people every year around the world in seasonal outbreaks. Of those infections, around 3 to 5 million are severe cases, leading to between 290,000 and 650,000 seasonal flu-related respiratory deaths.

Vaccines can help prevent some cases, and the WHO recommends annual vaccination – especially for people working in health care and for vulnerable people such as the old, the very young and people with underlying illness.

The WHO plan – which it described as its most comprehensive to date – includes measures to try to protect populations as much as possible from annual outbreaks of seasonal flu, as well as prepare for a pandemic.

Its two main goals, the WHO said, are to improve worldwide capacities for surveillance and response – by urging all governments to develop a national flu plan, and to develop better tools to prevent, detect, control and treat flu, such as more effective vaccines and antiviral drugs.

(Reporting by Kate Kelland, editing by Gareth Jones)