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WHAT'S KNOWN ON THIS SUBJECT:Food allergy awareness and prevalence reportedly have been increasing among children in recent years. WHAT THIS STUDY ADDS:This study is the first to make nationally representative trend estimates of food allergy prevalence and health care utilization in the United States. In addition, this study characterizes some food allergy characteristics according to race/ethnicity, which few studies reported previously. abstract OBJECTIVES:The goals were to estimate the prevalence of food allergy and to describe trends in food allergy prevalence and health care use among US children. METHODS: CONCLUSION:Several national health surveys indicate that food allergy prevalence and/or awareness has increased among US children in recent years.

On October 20, 2020, this report was posted as an MMWR Early Release on the MMWR website (https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr). As of October 15, 216,025 deaths from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been reported in the United States*; however, this number might underestimate the total impact of the pandemic on mortality. Measures of excess deaths have been used to estimate the impact of public health pandemics or disasters, particularly when there are questions about underascertainment of deaths directly attributable to a given event or cause (1-6). † Excess deaths are defined as the number of persons who have died from all causes, in excess of the expected number of deaths for a given place and time. This report describes trends and demographic patterns in excess deaths during January 26-October 3, 2020. Expected numbers of deaths were estimated using overdispersed Poisson regression models with spline terms to account for seasonal patterns, using provisional mortality data from CDC's National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) (7). Weekly numbers of deaths by age group and race/ethnicity were assessed to examine the difference between the weekly number of deaths occurring in 2020 and the average number occurring in the same week during 2015-2019 and the percentage change in 2020. Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths have occurred in the United States from late January through October 3, 2020, with two thirds of these attributed to COVID-19. The largest percentage increases were seen among adults aged 25-44 years and among Hispanic or Latino (Hispanic) persons. These results provide information about the degree to which COVID-19 deaths might be underascertained and inform efforts to prevent mortality directly or indirectly associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, such as efforts to minimize disruptions to health care. Estimates of excess deaths can provide a comprehensive account of mortality related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including deaths that are directly or indirectly attributable to COVID-19. Estimates of the numbers of deaths directly attributable to COVID-19 might be limited by factors such as the availability and use of diagnostic testing (including postmortem testing) and the accurate and complete reporting of cause of death information on the death certificate. Excess death analyses are not subject to these limitations because they examine historical trends in all-cause mortality to * CDC official counts of cases and deaths are released daily at https://covid.cdc. gov/covid-data-tracker/. † https://www.medrxiv