During peak COVID scare, more than a third of excess deaths had other causes
While COVID-19 was dominating the headlines in March and April, other causes accounted for 35% of excess deaths in the U.S., according to findings published July 1 in JAMA.
Investigators at Yale and Virginia Commonwealth University brought forth the observation after analyzing weekly mortality data from the National Center for Health Statistics for all 50 states plus DC.
The team broke the data into two subsets: January through April of this year and the preceding six years. They categorized as “excess” the recent deaths above the count that would be expected going by the longitudinal dataset.
In 14 states, more than half the excess deaths traced to an underlying cause other than COVID-19, the authors report.
In news coverage by by Virginia Commonwealth U, lead study author Steven Woolf, MD, says the COVID death counts as publicly reported “underestimate the true death toll of the pandemic” in the U.S.
He names two possible causes for the low tallies—lag times in COVID reporting and comorbidities worsened by COVID.
“But a third possibility, the one we’re quite concerned about, is indirect mortality— deaths caused by the response to the pandemic,” Woolf says. “People who never had the virus may have died from other causes because of the spillover effects of the pandemic, such as delayed medical care, economic hardship or emotional distress.”
The item points out that, while news and views on COVID were gripping the nation 24/7, New York City’s death rates alone soared 398% from heart disease and 356% from diabetes.
Click here for the VCU coverage and here for the research letter.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.