While the deaths from Covid-19 are lower, raising hopes that the U.S. is taking a turn as the vaccinations continue, countries in the country are gradually finding previously unreported deaths, which confuses the data.
The issues largely involve systems that states use to try to report Covid-19 data in the near future, and not deaths that are reported more slowly by death certificates. These frontline numbers are the ones that fuel government panels and data trackers, like the meticulous one created by Johns Hopkins University, which helps policymakers and the public keep a close eye on pandemic trends.
Ohio announced more than 4,000 additional deaths in February while its data was reconciled, and Indiana added about 1,500. Smaller versions have also recently come from Virginia, Minnesota and Rhode Island. On Thursday, authorities in West Virginia said medical providers did not properly report 168 deaths to the Department of Public Health.
“Nobody likes surprises, and nobody likes data that’s wrong, because that’s what drives decisions,” said West Virginia health official Ayne Amjad.
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These issues highlight ways in which Covid-19 can continue to challenge data reporting systems in the US. As in many countries, the US is trying to keep up with pandemic events as they happen, and much of this effort has required accelerating deaths. report.
In West Virginia, the reporting of deaths will usually have to wait many weeks until the death certificates are completed, Dr. Amjad said. But the state last year asked medical providers to also fill out a one-page report for the deaths of Covid-19 to set a faster record. The state discovered the recent census of all deaths in December and January using death certificates to establish that the 168 death reports were not completed properly, Dr Amjad said.
She said the reporting problems were at about 70 sites, mostly hospitals and long-term care facilities. A resurgence of the Covid-19 like the one that hit the U.S. in the winter could delay reporting, but she and Governor Jim Justice call the mistakes unacceptable. According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, US has seen more than 530,000 Covid-19 deaths, about half of them since Thanksgiving.
Daily reports Covid-19 deaths in US
Notes: For all 50 states and DC, US territories and voyages. Last updated
Source: Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering
On Tuesday, Minnesota health officials said an audit found four private labs did not report the lab’s results, leading to another 138 deaths. A health department spokesman recorded it on death certificates.
An audit in Indiana has uncovered 1,507 historic deaths, mostly from 2020, state officials said in early February. Death certificates were used to verify the deaths, a health department spokesman said. Shortly thereafter, a problem with an incompatible mortality rate led to the Ohio Department of Health finding 4,000 casualty Covid-19 deaths.
In Virginia, it was a systemic problem that recently led to the state adding about 900 deaths. There, officials realized that the number of deaths they reported did not appear to detect an increase in cases, and death certificates corrected the error, said Virginia epidemiologist Lilian Peake. “We realized something was wrong,” she said.
Monitoring the US Outbreak
Confirmed cases by state, arranged according to the latest daily count
Daily confirmed cases per 100,000 inhabitants
Note: Trend indicates whether there has been an increase or decrease in the total number of cases over the past seven days compared to the previous seven days. Last updated
Sources: Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering; the Lancet; Associated Press; US Census
These corrections do not pose major gaps that researchers say are a significant number of Covid-19 deaths. This is highlighted by a wide gap between known Covid-19 deaths and excessive deaths, or deaths above the average levels of recent years.
Misreporting of deaths in Covid-19 was likely especially early in the pandemic, when scarce testing and doctors filling out death certificates were less familiar with the disease, according to public health experts. They also suffered some excess deaths due to other problems, such as people avoiding hospitals during health cases.
“We are quite stuck with this sub-report, especially at the beginning of the pandemic,” said Robert Anderson, head of the death statistics branch at the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. .
Mr. Anderson says that frontline observation data can be linked to death certificates, can be improved in both systems. But changing death certificates is not easy. The person who completed the death certificate – often a doctor – must agree to amend the record.
President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris last month marked the loss of life for Covid-19 with a candlelight memorial and a moment of silence as the U.S. death toll exceeded 500,000. The president called on Americans to remain vigilant. Photo: Jim Loscalzo / CNP via ZUMA
“We see some deaths that were not Covid before it was then attributed to Covid, but that is a relatively small number,” he said. Anderson said.
The major changes at the state level could create at least temporary and artificial bumps in the data that Johns Hopkins and others are working together to show daily trends.
It happened briefly with the backlog of deaths from Indiana and Ohio, before working back, which Johns Hopkins tracked down and reproduced in his records where possible. However, on December 11, there was an artificially large 469-death bump in Iowa, conversely, from when the state changed the way it reports Covid-19 deaths.
“This is the challenge, and that’s why we need to work to improve our national surveillance,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Safety.
Write to Jon Kamp by [email protected]
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