“The lungs are usually so severely involved with pathology, so they are two to three times or more the normal weight of a normal lung.” “Most of the cases are pretty straightforward,” Fowkes told Live Science. But it’s not typically difficult to tell what killed them. Mary Fowkes, the chief of autopsy services at Mount Sinai. Most COVID-19 deaths seen at Mount Sinai Health System in New York are in people who have comorbid (or co-occurring) conditions such as coronary artery disease or kidney disease, said Dr. How hard it is to accurately determine whether COVID-19 was truly that last straw depends on the situation. “Without the COVID19 being the last straw or the thing that led to the chain of events that led to death, they probably wouldn’t have died,” she said. This has led to some confusion by people arguing that the “real” cause of death was heart disease or diabetes, Aiken said, but that’s not the case. There are also spaces for adding contributing factors.įor COVID-19, the immediate cause of death might be listed as respiratory distress, with the second line reading “due to COVID-19.” Contributing factors such as heart disease, diabetes or high blood pressure would then be listed further down. On a death certificate, there are spaces to list an immediate cause of death, as well as the chain of events that led to that final disease or incident. Having medical examiners confirm COVID-19 deaths can create more uniformity and clearer documentation, Aiken told Live Science. In those jurisdictions, medical examiners review medical records even of patients who die in hospitals to ensure that the symptoms and any testing indicate that the patient did indeed die of COVID-19. In some jurisdictions, including cities such as Chicago and Milwaukee, medical examiners are involved in determining the cause of death for every suspected COVID-19 case. Sally Aiken, the president of the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME).
Many COVID-19 death certificates are being handled by physicians unless the death occurred outside of the hospital, in which case a medical examiner or coroner would step in, said Dr. They can also be signed by medical examiners or coroners, who are independent officials who work for individual counties or cities. Cause of deathĭeath certificates can be signed by a physician who was responsible for a patient who died in a hospital, which accounts for many COVID-19 deaths. However, data on excess deaths in the United States over the past several months suggest that COVID-19 deaths are probably being undercounted rather than overcounted. The reality is that assigning a cause of death is not always straightforward, even pre-pandemic, and a patchwork of local rules and regulations makes getting valid national data challenging.
In Colorado, for example, a Republican state legislator has accused the state’s public health department of falsely inflating COVID-19 deaths in Florida, local media have objected to the State Department of Health’s refusal to release medical examiner data to the public, alleging that the state may be underreporting deaths. Now, official counts of coronavirus deaths are being challenged, too. As coronavirus has swept through the United States, finding the true number of people who have been infected has been stymied due to lack of testing.
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