How should I understand 'remain' here?

[Liqichao]

hello,
here is the sentence: such crashes remained the biggest cause of airline passenger deaths.

here the remain means the death toll was keeping up or the death toll is the biggest since then the crash?

thank you for your answers :D

[Alan]

Hi,

This (remained) suggests 'stayed' in the sense of not changing.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Present Simple

[Molly]

continued to be the case