COVID-19 Deaths Under Trump vs. Biden | Death Rates, Cases & Facts

COVID-19 Deaths Under Trump vs. Biden

COVID-19 deaths under Trump vs. Biden, measured strictly by each president’s actual time in office, is one of the most searched pandemic statistics in the country — and one that requires precise, date-anchored data rather than rough impressions. Donald Trump’s first term covered the pandemic’s opening year, from the first confirmed US case in January 2020 through January 20, 2021, a period with no vaccine and a healthcare system still building its testing infrastructure from scratch. Joe Biden’s full term, from January 20, 2021 to January 20, 2025, spanned the mass vaccination campaign, the Delta and Omicron waves, and the eventual end of the federal public health emergency. Donald Trump’s second term, which began January 20, 2025 and continues today, has so far coincided with the lowest sustained COVID-19 mortality of the entire pandemic era.

This report calculates and compares verified COVID-19 death totals strictly by presidential term — Trump’s first term, Biden’s full term, and Trump’s second term to date — using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) as the primary data source, cross-checked against contemporaneous federal reporting recorded at each inauguration date. Every total below is built from official annual mortality data and clearly documents the calculation method used to divide the transition years (2021 and 2025) between the outgoing and incoming presidents, so readers can see exactly how each number was derived.

Interesting Facts: COVID-19 Deaths Under Trump vs. Biden

Source: CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System, annual mortality data 2020–2025; PBS NewsHour and Newsweek (citing CDC/JHU cumulative tallies, January 2021); peer-reviewed citation of cumulative US total as of January 2025 (PMC, 2025).

Dividing COVID-19’s death toll strictly by presidential term produces a clear and fairly stark picture once the transition years are properly split. Trump’s first term, covering just under twelve months of active pandemic exposure, recorded an estimated 372,000 deaths — a toll driven almost entirely by the fact that no vaccine existed anywhere in the world for most of that period. Biden’s full four-year term recorded nearly double that number in absolute terms, an estimated 705,000 deaths, but that term also lasted four times as long and included the single deadliest calendar year of the entire pandemic (2021’s Delta wave) as well as the years of the steepest mortality decline (2022–2024). Trump’s second term, now roughly 18 months old as of this writing, has so far recorded the lowest COVID-19 death toll of any comparable stretch in the pandemic’s history.

The monthly average figures provide the clearest single comparison across terms of unequal length: roughly 31,000 deaths per month during Trump’s first term, falling to roughly 14,700 deaths per month across the full span of Biden’s term, and falling further still to roughly 1,600 deaths per month so far in Trump’s second term. That trajectory — a roughly 95% decline in the monthly death rate from the first term to the current one — reflects the compounding effect of vaccination, prior-infection immunity, and improved treatment built up gradually across the entire 2020–2026 period, not a change that occurred abruptly at either inauguration.

COVID-19 Deaths During Trump’s First Term (2020–January 2021)

COVID-19 DEATHS DURING TRUMP'S FIRST TERM (PANDEMIC PERIOD)
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  2020 (full year)              ████████████████████████████     350,831
  Jan 1-19, 2021 (final days)   ██                                21,619 (est.)
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TOTAL TRUMP TERM 1            ████████████████████████████████ ~372,450
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Vital Statistics System, final annual data; PBS NewsHour, “US Virus Death Toll Tops 400,000 in Trump’s Final Hours” (January 19, 2021); Newsweek, citing CDC data (December 2021).

Trump’s first term coincided with the pandemic’s most uncontrolled phase. The full calendar year 2020 recorded 350,831 deaths on the CDC’s finalized underlying-cause basis, a toll that accumulated during the roughly eleven months between the first confirmed US case in January 2020 and the end of that calendar year — a period with no vaccine available anywhere in the world and severe early shortages in testing capacity that likely caused some undercounting, particularly in the first few months. Adding a pro-rated estimate for the final 19 days of the term in January 2021 brings the total for Trump’s first term to approximately 372,450 deaths on this consistent measurement basis.

It’s worth noting that the widely reported “milestone” figure of over 400,000 deaths, cited by PBS NewsHour and other outlets on Trump’s final full day in office, used a different and broader “confirmed or probable” case-based tracking method (the same real-time system Johns Hopkins University and the CDC’s public dashboard used throughout the pandemic), which typically runs higher than the narrower “underlying cause of death” standard used in CDC/NCHS’s official finalized annual mortality tables. Both figures are legitimate and both are cited above for full transparency, but readers comparing sources should expect the real-time confirmed-or-probable tally and the finalized underlying-cause tally to differ by several percentage points for the same time period.

COVID-19 Deaths During Biden’s Full Term (January 2021–January 2025)

COVID-19 DEATHS DURING BIDEN'S FULL TERM
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  Jan 20 - Dec 31, 2021         ████████████████████████████████ 393,780 (est.)
  2022 (full year)              █████████████████                186,702
  2023 (full year)              ███████                             76,446
  2024 (full year)              ████                                 47,000
  Jan 1-19, 2025 (final days)   ▏                                       1,051 (est.)
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TOTAL BIDEN FULL TERM          ████████████████████████████████████ ~704,979
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Vital Statistics System, final and provisional annual data, 2021–2025; peer-reviewed citation reporting “over 1.1 million” cumulative US deaths as of January 2025 (PMC, Disparities in COVID-19 Mortality in the United States, 2020–2023, published 2025).

Biden’s full four-year term began just as the Delta variant was about to drive the single deadliest stretch of the pandemic. The period from his January 20, 2021 inauguration through the end of that year alone accounts for an estimated 393,780 deaths — nearly matching the entirety of Trump’s full first-term toll in less than a full calendar year — despite vaccines having become available a month before Biden took office. That toll reflects both the months it took to reach high population-wide vaccination coverage and the Delta variant’s markedly greater severity compared to earlier strains. From 2022 onward, the trajectory reversed sharply and consistently: 186,702 deaths in 2022, 76,446 in 2023, and roughly 47,000 in 2024, a decline of more than 88% from the first year of Biden’s term to his last, bringing the estimated total for his full term to approximately 705,000 deaths.

The cumulative US total cited in peer-reviewed literature as of January 2025 — “over 1.1 million” deaths — is consistent with, though not identical to, the sum of adding Trump’s first-term total (~372,000) and Biden’s full-term total (~705,000), which comes to approximately 1.08 million on the underlying-cause basis used throughout this report. The modest gap between these two cross-checks (roughly 20,000–40,000, or under 4%) reflects the same underlying-cause-versus-confirmed-or-probable methodology difference discussed above, and both figures point to the same broad conclusion: the overwhelming majority of the pandemic’s cumulative US death toll — roughly 95% of it — occurred before 2022, spanning the final year of Trump’s first term and the first year of Biden’s presidency.

COVID-19 Deaths During Trump’s Second Term (January 2025–Present)

COVID-19 DEATHS DURING TRUMP'S SECOND TERM (TO DATE)
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  Jan 20 - Dec 31, 2025          ██                        19,139 (est.)
  Jan 1, 2026 - present (Jul 30) █                          Data incomplete/provisional
  ────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  TOTAL TRUMP TERM 2 (TO DATE)   ██                       ~19,000+ (partial, ongoing)
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Source: CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Vital Statistics System, provisional 2025–2026 data.

Trump’s second term has so far coincided with the lowest sustained period of COVID-19 mortality since the pandemic began. The estimated 19,139 deaths occurring between his January 20, 2025 inauguration and the end of that calendar year represent a small fraction of the toll recorded during any comparable stretch of either prior period covered in this report — a reflection of how far population immunity, vaccination, and treatment availability had advanced by 2025, regardless of which administration was in office. As of this writing, 2026 data remains provisional and incomplete, since NCHS mortality data typically takes approximately 11 months after a calendar year ends to be finalized, and CDC surveillance through the middle of 2026 indicates the low, stable mortality pattern established in 2025 has continued into the current year.

Because Trump’s second term is still in progress as of July 30, 2026 — with roughly 18 months elapsed out of a four-year term — any full-term comparison to Trump’s first term or Biden’s completed term remains necessarily partial. What can be said with confidence from the data available so far is that the monthly average death toll during this term (roughly 1,600 per month) is dramatically lower than either of the two preceding periods, continuing an unbroken year-over-year decline that began in 2022 and has persisted across the transition between the two most recent administrations.

Side-by-Side Comparison: Total Deaths by Presidential Term

TOTAL COVID-19 DEATHS BY PRESIDENTIAL TERM (SIDE-BY-SIDE)
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  Trump Term 1 (~12 months, pandemic period)   ████████████████ ~372,450
  Biden Full Term (48 months)                  ████████████████████████████████ ~704,979
  Trump Term 2 (~18 months, ongoing)           ██                                ~19,000+
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Source: Author calculations from CDC/NCHS National Vital Statistics System annual data, 2020–2026, using the pro-rating methodology described above.

Placed side by side, the raw totals and the monthly averages tell two different but equally valid stories. In raw cumulative terms, Biden’s full term recorded nearly double the deaths of Trump’s first term — but Biden’s term also lasted four times as long, and it inherited a pandemic already at its most severe biological phase when it began, before the Delta variant’s summer 2021 surge had even peaked. Trump’s first term, despite lasting less than a third as long as Biden’s, recorded a monthly death rate more than double Biden’s term-wide average — a reflection of the fact that his entire term-length pandemic exposure occurred before any vaccine existed, when the virus was spreading through a population with zero prior immunity.

Trump’s second term, though still incomplete, has so far recorded a monthly average roughly 95% lower than his first term and roughly 89% lower than Biden’s full term — continuing a decline that has been consistent and gradual since 2022 rather than tied to any single transition date. Readers wanting the complete underlying annual dataset behind every figure in this comparison — including death rates per 100,000 population and COVID-19’s changing rank among US causes of death each year — can consult the full COVID-19 deaths by year in the US report which breaks down every calendar year from 2020 through 2026 individually.

COVID-19 Death Rate per 100,000 Population by Presidential Term

AVERAGE ANNUALIZED DEATH RATE PER 100,000, BY PRESIDENTIAL TERM
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
  Trump Term 1 (2020-Jan 2021)     ████████████████████████████ ~110 per 100,000/year
  Biden Full Term (2021-2025)      █████████████████            ~53 per 100,000/year (term avg.)
  Trump Term 2 (2025-present)      ██                           ~5.9 per 100,000/year (2025)
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════

Source: CDC/NCHS death counts; U.S. Census Bureau population estimates, per-100,000 rates calculated for each calendar year and averaged across each presidential term’s covered years.

Adjusting for population size confirms the same pattern shown in the raw totals, while also making clear just how much the rate varied within Biden’s single term. His four years alone span the highest annual death rate ever recorded (125.1 per 100,000 in 2021) and one of the lowest rates recorded up to that point (14.0 per 100,000 in 2024) — a 9-fold difference within a single presidential term, driven entirely by the biological and immunological changes in the pandemic rather than by any single policy shift. Averaging across all four years still leaves Biden’s term with a higher average rate than Trump’s second term but a lower average rate than Trump’s first term, precisely because his term captured both the tail end of the pandemic’s most lethal phase and the beginning of its endemic, low-mortality phase.

Trump’s first term’s annualized rate of roughly 110 per 100,000 reflects a period when the entire population was immunologically naive to the virus, while his second term’s rate so far, at roughly 5.9 per 100,000, reflects a population with multiple layers of accumulated immunity from vaccination and prior infection. This rate-based view reinforces the central finding of this report: the pandemic’s death toll was overwhelmingly a function of which biological and immunological phase of the outbreak coincided with each president’s time in office, a factor that operated largely independently of which party controlled the White House at any given moment.

Vaccine and Variant Context by Presidential Term

Source: CDC COVID-19 Vaccination Timeline; CDC COVID Data Tracker variant proportion archives; CDC Museum COVID-19 Timeline.

The vaccine and variant context above is essential to reading the death totals correctly, because it shows that Trump’s first term ended just as the single most consequential medical countermeasure of the pandemic — the vaccine — became available, while Biden’s term was responsible for the actual population-wide deployment of that tool, deploying it against a virus that, in its Delta form, was more severe than anything Trump’s term had faced. By the time Trump’s second term began, the combination of vaccination, prior infection, and antiviral treatment had already reduced COVID-19 to a background respiratory illness managed primarily through wastewater and genomic surveillance rather than the case-count-driven tracking used earlier in the pandemic.

For readers who want a deeper look at how public vaccination uptake has continued to evolve into the current term — including kindergarten vaccination coverage, adult booster uptake, and the measles resurgence tied to declining childhood vaccination rates — the vaccine hesitancy statistics for the US provide the complete, current dataset. And for the latest on the specific variant currently under CDC and WHO surveillance during Trump’s second term, the new COVID variant statistics cover the BA.3.2 “Cicada” variant’s US spread, genetics, and vaccine-effectiveness data in full.

Methodology: How These Presidential-Term Totals Were Calculated

Source: CDC/NCHS technical notes on provisional versus final mortality data, 2026.

No single official government dataset publishes COVID-19 deaths pre-split by presidential term — the CDC’s own reporting is organized strictly by calendar year, which is why the day-count pro-rating method above was necessary to produce term-specific totals. This method is transparent and reproducible, but it carries one known limitation worth stating plainly: because COVID-19 deaths have historically been higher in winter months than in other seasons, a pro-rated estimate that assumes an even daily spread across the year can slightly overstate or understate the true total for a partial-year period that happens to fall in January, depending on that particular winter’s severity.

Given that limitation, this report has presented both the pro-rated term totals and the independently reported real-time cumulative milestones (over 400,000 by January 20, 2021; over 1.1 million by January 2025) side by side throughout, so that readers can see the two approaches largely agree on the overall magnitude and trend, even where the exact figures differ by a few percentage points. That consistency across two independently sourced methods is the strongest evidence available that the term-by-term totals in this report are a reasonable and defensible estimate of how COVID-19’s death toll actually divided across Trump’s first term, Biden’s full term, and Trump’s second term to date.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

Email ID:

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Email

Email *

SUBSCRIBE