Illinois strives for correct COVID-19 death statistics, says numbers aren't inflated

Despite claims that the COVID-19 death toll is inflated, Illinois health officials say they strive to make sure their statistics correctly reflect people whose deaths were caused or hastened by coronavirus disease.

Melaney Arnold, spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health, said in an October email to The State Journal-Register that there was a “simplified definition” of a COVID-19 death in the early weeks and months of the pandemic in 2020.

At that time, she said, “it was difficult to review every death record to identify if COVID-19 was the immediate or underlying cause of death, or a contributing factor, or if the death was not COVID-19-related but mention of it was included in the death record.”

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Indeed, some skeptics of the Illinois death statistics pointed to news conference remarks by IDPH director Dr. Ngozi Ezike on April 19, 2020.

“Everybody who’s listed as a COVID death doesn’t mean that that was the cause of death, but they had COVID at the time of death,” Ezike said at the press briefing.

She said a hospice patient who was dying from another illness but was found to have COVID at the time of death would be listed as a COVID-19 death.

A Facebook post containing a video of Ezike’s comments has racked up 400,000 views.

Since Ezike made the comments, however, the way COVID-19 deaths are counted has become more precise, Arnold said.

“We have worked to review death-certificate data from the beginning of the pandemic to identify any COVID-19 deaths in which the cause of death listed on the death certificate clearly indicates an alternative cause, such as due to motor vehicle accidents, overdoses or gunshot wounds, and have removed those deaths from our counts,” Arnold said.

“While we understand that there are those who wish to discount the number of people who have died from COVID-19, the definition of a COVID-19 death has been honed over the past year and 10 months to better reflect those who die of the disease,” she said.

“It is also important to note,” Arnold said, “that early in the pandemic, there were deaths due to COVID-19 that were not captured because testing was either not done or it was not listed in the death record.”

Arnold added that the state health department, working with local health departments, now is following the national case definition for “Vital Records Criteria for Reporting” in which a COVID-19 death is counted only if COVID-19 or an equivalent term is listed in the death certificate as an “immediate cause of death,” “underlying cause of death” or “significant condition contributing to death.”

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COVID-19 deaths from the beginning of the pandemic totaled 287 among Sangamon County residents as of Friday.

There have been 25,948 confirmed and 2,884 probable COVID-19 deaths across Illinois and 747,970 COVID-19 deaths across the United States, according to IDPH and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, respectively.

An article published by the Association of American Medical Colleges said discrepancies in COVID-19 death statistics are rooted in the fact that COVID-19 “kills in myriad ways, typically setting off a combination of potentially fatal afflictions.”

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The article quotes Dr. Sara Auld, a critical care specialist at Atlanta’s Emory University Hospital Midtown, as saying: “COVID-19 can cause an extraordinarily wide range of clinical complications. While pneumonia and respiratory failure are the most common manifestations, it can also cause blood clots, including strokes and heart attacks.”

Politico reported in October that death investigations in the United States are generally "non-uniform." The Politico story said coroners, doctors, sheriffs, justices of the peace and others all can fill out death certificates in the more than 2,000 jurisdictions that report deaths.

Contact Dean Olsen: dolsen@gannett.com; (217) 836-1068; twitter.com/DeanOlsenSJR.

This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Illinois strives for accurate COVID death numbers, IDPH official says