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Thursday, Oct. 28, 2021

Is every death of a person with COVID-19 counted as a COVID death?

Ed Payne, Lead Stories
no

The CDC says COVID-19 should not be reported on a death certificate if it did not cause or contribute to the death — in other words, if a person with COVID died in an accident, that would not be counted as a COVID death.

The implication in a post on social media is that any time someone infected with COVID-19 dies, their death is counted as a coronavirus death. That's not true — the CDC has specific guidelines for filling out death certificates.

Among the guidelines:

"COVID-19 should not be reported on the death certificate if it did not cause or contribute to the death."

A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine said about 30% of COVID deaths during the first three months of the pandemic may not have been classified as such — meaning, if anything, COVID-19 deaths in that period were under-counted.

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