Christ on a bike.

At that rate, a highly noticeable portion of the population would be vanishing entirely due to medical intervention every year. It's only a bit (3x) smaller than total deaths per year.
I will assume it's nonsense, as you argue, and can only apologise for my countrypeople who accepted this for publication.
Although the authors seem to be based in the US.

Is this deliberate misinformation, or just bad "Salami Science", where results are split up to garner citations?