DES MOINES — As it turns out, COVID-19 is far worse than the flu.COVID-19 likely will go down as the third-leading cause of death in Iowa in 2020, when 4,667 Iowans were confirmed to have died as a result of the disease by Dec. 31, public health data show.Iowa’s first COVID-19 death was recorded March 24, 2020, of a person identified by the state as a Dubuque County resident between 61 and 80 years old.If the state’s five-year averages for causes of death hold, only cancer and heart disease will have claimed more Iowans’ lives than COVID-19 in 2020.For the years 2015 to 2019, the most recent for which state data is available, an average of 7,124 Iowans each year died of heart disease and an average of 6,431 Iowans each year died of cancer.COVID-19 will go down as Iowa’s third-leading cause of death, more than double chronic respiratory diseases, accidents, strokes, Alzheimer’s and diabetes, according to state data.And COVID-19 has been far deadlier than influenza, which over those five years claimed the lives of an average of 596 Iowans annually.