COVID-19 has fallen out of the world's 10 leading causes of death for the first time since the pandemic began in 2020, only two years after it held first place.
The World Health Organization (WHO),published the new figures on Friday 2 October 2026 in its latest Global Health Estimates, which report trends for more than 160 diseases and injuries from 2000 to 2023.
Stefan Anderson reported on the release for Health Policy Watch, a Geneva-based health news outlet.
WHO estimates that COVID-19 was directly responsible for about 900,000 deaths in 2023, which made it the 14th leading cause of death.
In 2021 the figure was 9.4 million, and the new estimates rank COVID-19 as the world's leading cause of death that year.
WHO's 2024 estimates had ranked it second, and WHO notes that, because of changes in data and methods, its new estimates cannot be directly compared with those it released before.
COVID-19 ranked third in 2020, with 5.3 million deaths, and WHO describes a declining trend in 2022 and 2023.
WHO Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared COVID-19 over as a global health emergency on 5 May 2023, while saying this did not mean it was over as a health threat.
The world recorded about 61 million deaths in 2023.
COVID-19 still ranked tenth in upper-middle-income countries, one of four income groups the World Bank sets by gross national income, a measure of a country's total income.
It was the only group where the virus stayed in the top 10, and WHO says deaths directly caused by it there have fallen by 85 percent from the 2021 peak.
Global life expectancy, the average number of years a baby born that year could expect to live, reached 73.3 years in 2023, compared with 73.4 years in 2019.
Healthy life expectancy, which counts only the years lived in full health, reached 62.8 years in 2023, which is 0.4 of a year below its 2019 level.
"Living longer is one of the great achievements of public health," said Dr Alain Labrique, Director of WHO's Department of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and AI, in the 2 October release.
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He said the next challenge is making sure those extra years are lived in good health.
Illnesses that do not spread from person to person, known as noncommunicable diseases, accounted for 74 percent of deaths worldwide in 2023, compared with 58 percent in 2000.
They make up eight of the 10 leading causes of death.
The other group, communicable diseases, covers infections along with conditions linked to pregnancy, birth and nutrition.
Ischaemic heart disease, which is caused by too little blood flow to the heart muscle, ranked first, accounting for 16 percent of deaths, or 9.5 million people, in 2023.
Since 2000 its deaths have risen by 3.0 million, the largest increase for any disease.
Stroke ranked second at about 11 percent of deaths, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a long-term lung disease that makes breathing hard, ranked third at about 6 percent.
Lower respiratory infections, which include illnesses such as pneumonia, ranked fourth and were the most deadly communicable disease, with 2.7 million deaths, the same level as in 2019.
Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia ranked fifth with 2.1 million deaths, compared with 19th place in 2000, and WHO says dementia deaths have tripled since then.
HIV and AIDS ranked seventh in 2000 and 22nd in 2023, with deaths down by 62 percent.
In 2023, for the first time, communicable diseases caused fewer than half of all deaths in low-income countries.
Seven of the 10 leading causes of death there were still communicable, and malaria, tuberculosis and HIV and AIDS remained in the top 10, though WHO says deaths from each fell significantly.
These are estimates for 2023, not real-time data, so they do not describe COVID-19 deaths in 2026.
WHO draws on national death records, its own programme estimates, United Nations partners and research studies, and its member countries review the estimates before publication.
WHO also cautions that accurate death data remain hard to collect in many low-income countries, where recording systems are often fragmented, incomplete or inconsistent.
WHO's fact sheet reports the fall in COVID-19 deaths but does not state what caused it.
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