Diabetes deaths in the U.S. have fallen to some of the lowest rates in years, according to new preliminary figures published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reversing a surge in mortality that was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic.

There were 26.4 deaths per 100,000 people from diabetes, according to early death certificate data for the third quarter of 2024 published this month by the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics. 

Death rates from diabetes peaked in 2021, according to CDC figures, at 31.1 deaths per 100,000 people for that year. Diabetes was the eighth leading cause of death in 2021. The CDC says the link between COVID-19 and diabetes may be to blame for that increase. 

“Data show an increase in mortality rates for all people during the COVID-19 pandemic, and research shows that people with underlying conditions, including diabetes, are more likely to become very sick from COVID-19 and have a higher risk of hospitalization and death,” Christopher Holliday, head of the CDC’s Division of Diabetes Translation, told CBS News in a statement.

Holliday added that research shows the pandemic may also have made it harder for Americans to properly manage the disease, ranging from interruptions to physical activity to disruptions to routine medical care diagnosing and treating the disease.

“While diabetes-related death rates have decreased since 2021, they have not returned to pre-pandemic levels,” Holliday said.

There were 103,294 deaths from diabetes in 2021, up more than 17% from 87,647 deaths in 2019 before the pandemic. Provisional data reported so far for 2024 have tallied 94,294 diabetes deaths last year.

Diabetes deaths had been largely falling in recent years before the COVID-19 pandemic, despite an increase in the prevalence of the disease. Those trends were before the introduction of new diabetes treatments like Ozempic and Mounjaro that have seen high demand.

Nearly 1 in 10 adults had diagnosed diabetes in 2023, according to the CDC’s National Health Interview Survey.

Experts caution that analyzing long term trends in diabetes deaths is complex for a number of reasons, including changes in the definition of the disease over the past decades and variation in how death certificates record diabetes deaths.

Also, not all death certificates record diabetes as the main “underlying cause of death” but instead as a contributing factor, which is counted separately. 

“Diabetes is a more common contributing cause of death, not the primary underlying cause of death. Furthermore, most deaths among people with diabetes are cardiovascular and would be counted among the cardiovascular,” Elizabeth Selvin, director of the Johns Hopkins Welch Center for Prevention, Epidemiology and Clinical Research, said in an email to CBS News.

Selvin said it is up to doctors to choose whether to select diabetes or other underlying health conditions as the cause of a heart attack death.

“All of this to say, trends in underlying causes of death will reflect awareness of diabetes and coding practices; It is hard to know what role these play in these data,” Selvin said.