MA's COVID Death Toll To Drop By Thousands Under New Criteria

MASSACHUSETTS — The Massachusetts Department of Public Health will update its criteria for codifying COVID-19 deaths on Monday, lowering the total number of deaths attributed to the pandemic by thousands.

A COVID-related death is currently defined as anyone who has COVID listed as a cause of death on their death certificate, and people who had a COVID-19 diagnosis within 60 days of their death but did not have it listed as their cause of death.

Until April 2021, the DPH counted anyone who had tested positive for the virus as a COVID death. That criteria was updated after about a year to include a 60-day timeframe between a COVID diagnosis and death.

Now it will be updated again, reducing the timeframe from 60 days to 30 days for people without a COVID diagnosis on their death certificate. The DPH said this range has been adopted by other states and is based on the recommendation of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists and the CDC.

"We are adopting the new definition because we support the need to standardize the way COVID-19-associated deaths are counted," DPH State Epidemiologist Dr. Catherine Brown said in a statement. "Prior to the CSTE definition, states did not have a nationally recommended definition for COVID-19 deaths and, as such, have been using a variety of processes and definitions to count their deaths. In Massachusetts, our definition has consistently been broader than most other states. After a deep dive into our data and reviewing thousands of death certificates, we recognize that this updated definition gives us a truer picture of mortality associated with COVID-19."

This means 4,081 deaths that were previously considered COVID-related will be removed from the state's total, and about 400 deaths will be retroactively deemed COVID deaths, the DPH said. The agency called its previous criteria "overly broad" and said it resulted in an "over-counting" of deaths associated with COVID.

Beginning Monday, all calculations involving deaths posted in the state's COVID-19 dashboard and the raw data file will contain the updated data. Previous raw data files will still be available on the website and will not be updated.

Deaths in long-term care facilities will continue to be reported directly from those facilities, but the updated definition will align surveillance deaths more closely with the reported counts, the DPH said.

This article originally appeared on the Across Massachusetts Patch