Dr. Kristina Box, Indiana State Health Commissioner, responded to a question during the Wednesday, September 2, 2020, Governor Eric Holcomb’s weekly press briefing, regarding posts made on social media, that have gone viral, that a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report stated only 6% of deaths of COVID-19 (9,000) can be attributed to COVID-19 and the remainder did not die of COVID-19.
The CDC report reads “For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned. For deaths with conditions or causes in addition to COVID-19, on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death.”
“Boy, has it been misinterpreted by social media,” said Dr. Box.
She continued, “the National Center for Health Statistics puts out a data report every single week for the CDC and on August the 26th, the one they put out, was basically surrounding what death certificates say about deaths from COVID-19. In there they mentioned that 6% of the death certificates had only COVID listed as a cause of death.
“So, automatically, some of the social media individuals decided – well the other 94% did not die from COVID-19 so that instead of having 180,000 deaths or over that in the United States, we had 9,000 deaths from COVID-19 – which is absolutely incorrect.”
Dr. Box spoke of how an underlying condition would be stated on a death certificate for cancer death, but those condition(s) would not overshadow the death being a result of cancer.
“It would be like saying that someone that had cancer came in and died of a complication. Maybe of their treatment that they were receiving or lung metastases or brain metastases, but they also had hypertension or diabetes on their diagnosis, on the death certificate – so they didn’t die of their cancer. That is absolutely not true.
“We know that physicians and healthcare professionals put down what they see as causes or contributors to an individual’s death. So someone who came in and died of COVID-19 might also have been at higher risk because they had underlying heart disease or lung disease or diabetes or underlying renal failure, but that does not mean that COVID-19 was not a contributing cause to their death.”
She explained the process the Indiana State Department Health (ISDH) follows in determining if the death was a result of COVID-19.
“And that is one of the reasons that in the state of Indiana, we’re very, very careful when we get a report of a COVID death. We number one confirm that there was an infection with COVID-19 by finding that lab report and attaching to it. We look at the death certificate and we see what the health care professionals have put down as the causes of death and at the same time we make sure that if there’s any questions about that, we review that with the health care professional.”
Dr. Box concluded her remarks by sharing how the ISDH handles deaths that are believed to be related to COVID-19, but does not have a positive test result.
“And, we have actually separated those deaths that don’t have a positive COVID test and called them probable deaths. Because we know that some of our healthcare professionals are confident that an individual’s death was related to COVID based on their clinical course and based on the imaging studies and other things that they had done in the hospital. But if we don’t have a positive test, we put that down as a probable COVID death.”
The ISDH daily COVID-19 report as of September 2, 2020, showed Indiana had 3,106 total deaths with an additional 219 probable deaths. In Clinton County, there was 1 additional death reported bringing the total to 10. The ISDH does not break out probable deaths by county.
