COLLEGE STATION, Texas — As we move into month six of the pandemic in the United States, people are having questions about the accuracy of the death rates from coronavirus.
According to the CDC, the United States has nearly 6 million cases of coronavirus, and the death rate is based off of death certificate data.
“... this is a novel disease we’ve never seen before, so understanding it and deciding who has symptoms, who doesn’t, how do we test for it, how we count them, we’re having to learn as we respond, and so that makes data collection in this environment really, really hard because you’re starting off without even a solid case definition that defines what is a COVID-19 case and what does that encompass," said Texas A&M School of Public Health's Dr. Angela Clendenin.
On the CDC website, six percent of coronavirus deaths were deemed the only cause of death. Dying with coronavirus while also having other conditions, this is considered a comorbidity.
“[A comorbidity is] when you have more than one health condition that can exacerbate the others. So somebody that has cardiac disease but also has cancer, or cardiac disease and diabetes, those are comorbidities and they interact with each other in somebody’s body... if somebody is older who has a suppressed immune system because they have cancer then [gets] covid, and they die, well you have to ask yourself, did the person die because they had another disorder or did they die because COVID exacerbated that disorder? " said Dr. Clendenin.
She said researchers are learning as they collect data because the disease is so new.
“When you’re in the middle of the pandemic those definitions can change regularly... but moving forward, now we can have a very clear case definition [and] the data collection gets better and better over time. Things get refined over time," said Dr. Clendenin.
She added that looking at the primary and secondary causes of death is important to how the death rate is calculated.
For more information about how the death rate for coronavirus has been counted, visit https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/index.htm.