Watch how quickly coronavirus becomes the third leading cause of daily deaths

The number of deaths resulting from the novel COVID-19 coronavirus are rising swiftly.

A data visualization created Wednesday by Dr. Maria Danilychev shows just how fast COVID-19 became the third leading daily killer in the United States behind only heart disease and cancer.

There are a couple of caveats, however. The chart puts the coronavirus data, pulled from Worldometers, up against the latest mortality data from the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention from 2018. The CDC set actually shows average daily deaths, while the deaths from coronavirus in the visualization represent individual days, rather than the average, which would register lower on the scale.

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Still, the data highlights the trajectory of the virus, and the average number of deaths per day will almost certainly continue to increase for some time.