COVID-19 has killed more cops than any other cause in 2020, data show

More U.S. police officers have died of the coronavirus so far in 2020 than in car crashes, shootings and all other causes combined, data show.

“More cops have died from COVID this year than have been killed on patrol,” said former Vice President Joe Biden in a speech Monday in Pittsburgh.

Data compiled by two law enforcement nonprofits, the Officer Down Memorial Page and the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, show COVID-19 as the leading killer of officers in 2020.

The Officer Down Memorial Page shows 101 coronavirus-related deaths out of 182 total line-of-duty deaths in 2020, followed by 31 shooting deaths and 15 deaths in car crashes.

A National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund map shows 105 COVID-19 deaths among local, state, tribal and federal officers so far in 2020.

The memorial fund says only officers who were exposed to the coronavirus in the course of their duties are included in the statistics.

Other causes of death, including firearm- and traffic-related incidents, are responsible for another 88 law enforcement deaths so far in 2020, the fund says. In 2019, 99 officers had died from those causes by this point in the year.

Chris Cosgriff, executive director of the Officer Down Memorial Page, said the nonprofit is still working to determine whether 150 additional coronavirus-related deaths of law enforcement happened in the line of duty, The Washington Post reported.

“By the end of this pandemic, it is very likely that COVID will surpass 9/11 as the single largest incident cause of death for law enforcement officers,” Cosgriff said, according to the newspaper.

Seventy-two officers died Sept. 11 and more than 300 have since died of cancer related to the attacks and cleanup, the Post reported.

Correctional officers account for a large percentage of the coronavirus-related law enforcement deaths in 2020, Cosgriff said, according to the outlet.

More than 26 million cases of the COVID-19 virus have been confirmed worldwide with more than 863,000 deaths as of Sept. 3, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 6.1 million confirmed cases with more than 185,000 deaths.

The World Health Organization has declared coronavirus a global pandemic. In the United States, President Donald Trump has declared a national emergency.

This story was originally published September 3, 2020 at 8:21 AM with the headline "COVID-19 has killed more cops than any other cause in 2020, data show."