The fast-spreading novel coronavirus is almost certainly killing Americans who are not included in the nation’s growing death toll, according to public health experts and government officials involved in the tally.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.
A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.
Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.
As a result, public health officials and government leaders lack a complete view of the pandemic’s death toll as they assess its course and scramble to respond.
Scientists who analyze mortality statistics from influenza and other respiratory illnesses say it is too early to estimate how many fatalities have gone unrecorded. For a disease with common symptoms such as covid-19, they said, deaths with positive results almost certainly represent only a fraction of the total caused by the disease.
“You can’t rely on just the laboratory-confirmed cases,” said Marc-Alain Widdowson, an epidemiologist who left the CDC last year and now serves as director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Belgium. “You’re never going to apply the test on everybody who is ill and everybody who dies. So without doubt — it’s a truism — the number of deaths are underestimated globally because you don’t apply the test.”
Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s “coronavirus czar,” acknowledged that the state’s count is presumably incomplete. West Virginia was the last state to report a case of the virus and had recorded only two deaths as of Saturday.
“Based on the best recent information about limited testing and sizable false negative rates of testing, we are likely underestimating the number of deaths,” said Marsh, vice president and executive dean for health sciences at West Virginia University. The count is also low in West Virginia, Marsh said, because the state has a small, rural population and had closed schools and nonessential businesses early.
The CDC has launched an effort to use national data on illnesses, hospitalizations and death certificates to estimate covid-19 infections and deaths. The agency already publishes such estimates weekly for flu, where laboratory-confirmed cases and deaths similarly represent only a fraction of the total attributable to the disease.
“We’re probably getting more information on covid-19 because there’s a greater awareness in the community of what it is,” Nordlund said. Read More Click here
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.
A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.
Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.
As a result, public health officials and government leaders lack a complete view of the pandemic’s death toll as they assess its course and scramble to respond.
Scientists who analyze mortality statistics from influenza and other respiratory illnesses say it is too early to estimate how many fatalities have gone unrecorded. For a disease with common symptoms such as covid-19, they said, deaths with positive results almost certainly represent only a fraction of the total caused by the disease.
“You can’t rely on just the laboratory-confirmed cases,” said Marc-Alain Widdowson, an epidemiologist who left the CDC last year and now serves as director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Belgium. “You’re never going to apply the test on everybody who is ill and everybody who dies. So without doubt — it’s a truism — the number of deaths are underestimated globally because you don’t apply the test.”
Clay Marsh, West Virginia’s “coronavirus czar,” acknowledged that the state’s count is presumably incomplete. West Virginia was the last state to report a case of the virus and had recorded only two deaths as of Saturday.
“Based on the best recent information about limited testing and sizable false negative rates of testing, we are likely underestimating the number of deaths,” said Marsh, vice president and executive dean for health sciences at West Virginia University. The count is also low in West Virginia, Marsh said, because the state has a small, rural population and had closed schools and nonessential businesses early.
The CDC has launched an effort to use national data on illnesses, hospitalizations and death certificates to estimate covid-19 infections and deaths. The agency already publishes such estimates weekly for flu, where laboratory-confirmed cases and deaths similarly represent only a fraction of the total attributable to the disease.
“We’re probably getting more information on covid-19 because there’s a greater awareness in the community of what it is,” Nordlund said. Read More Click here
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