To get an accurate picture of the pandemic, the US needs to test more of the dead.
But scientists said that the current coronavirus pandemic is of an entirely different magnitude.
Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist from the Yale School of Public Health, analyzed NCHS death count data to estimate how many COVID-19 deaths may have gone uncounted during the five-week period from March 1 to April 3. Given the still-looming threat to the U.S., researchers are urging municipalities to maintain as much detailed data about COVID-19 records as possible.As the pandemic rages across all 50 states and around the globe with no uniform reporting protocol in place, experts said the official death count is hard to even estimate.
“Even now if you’re comparing reporting among different countries, you’ve got to ask, ‘Are they reporting only deaths in hospitals? Only people they are sure had COVID? Which test did they use? What about deaths occurring elsewhere – in nursing homes and at home? Are they being counted?’” Yet it was also only last week that the CDC began the laborious process of preparing to incorporate nursing home deaths into its overall death count. The agencysaying it would soon begin requiring that nursing homes report communicable disease deaths promptly to federal authorities. It’s unclear when the U.S. will begin including those figures in its national death count.
“Some states, such as Florida and Pennsylvania, might have missed deaths early on and might be under-counting deaths by a substantial degree currently,” the Yale scientists concluded. “Other states, like Washington, have an accurate estimate of the mortality burden of the pandemic virus due to intense testing," the paper said.
“Post-mortem, we don't know how long the [COVID-19 diagnostic] test is valid for after death,” said CAP’s Williamson. “If a person is not found in their house for five days, does the COVID-19 test still work? We don't really know the answer to that.”
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