According to a study released Wednesday, the number of Americans who died from COVID-19 in March and May was significantly higher than the official US count, in part due to discrepancies in statewide reporting.
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Omar Yeefoon, owner of the vegan restaurant Shoals Sound & Service, takes a break while speaking Tuesday, June 30, 2020 in Dallas. Yeefoon reopened his Dallas restaurant on June 10 to “a pretty good reception,” after being closed for three months. The return was fleeting. After four days, Yeefoon had to close again in the face of the revival of COVID-19 in Texas and fire two of the four workers he had brought in. (AP Photo / LM Otero)
According to the study funded by the National Institutes of Health and the private sector, the total number of deaths in the US from any cause counted by the National Center for Health Statistics during March, April, and May was 781,000, or 122,300 more than the historical average for the period. foundations published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
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The number of deaths from March to May officially listed as due to COVID-19 was 95,235, or 28% less than that excess number. A Reuters count for the period, which includes “probable” COVID-19 deaths, was higher at 103,649.
Media reports have suggested that many early nursing home deaths or those attributed to pneumonia instead of COVID-19 may have contributed to an insufficient count.
“Determining the cause of death on a death certificate is not rocket science,” said Daniel Weinberger, lead author of the Yale School of Public Health study.
“It is possible that someone who had COVID-19 and caused pneumonia may have pneumonia listed as the cause of death. While another jurisdiction may have COVID as the cause,” he said. “The codification of why a person died can vary greatly from person to person and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.”
In several states, deaths that could later have been attributed to the coronavirus occurred before COVID-19 diagnostic tests were widely available.
“Some states had a good match between the number of reported coronavirus deaths and the total number. Washington state and Minnesota have almost no gap, but in South Carolina and Texas there is a considerable difference,” Weinberger said.
Other studies have found that fears of the coronavirus keep people with symptoms of heart attack or stroke away from emergency rooms, possibly contributing to the increase in deaths.
Concerns have also been raised about the increased risk of suicide and drug overdose, caused by unemployment caused by the pandemic.
“You can certainly see that things like heart attacks and strokes and people dying from a primary cause like Alzheimer’s disease have increased,” Weinberger said. “But when you look at the magnitude, it’s still smaller than the coronavirus deaths.”
Discrepancies in COVID-19 death reports have decreased significantly in recent weeks as diagnostic tests became more available and awareness of the disease increased, Weinberger said.
“Things are much better now than in March,” he said.
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