The Indiana State Department of Health’s coronavirus website will be featuring an additional statistic.
State Health Commissioner Dr. Kristina Box said on Friday that presumptive COVID-19 deaths that have been clinically diagnosed will be included as a separate statistic on the website but not included in the total number of confirmed cases.
“What this means is that if a physician listed COVID-19 as a contributing cause of death for a patient, but no COVID-19 positive test was documented on that individual,” stated Dr. Box. “The clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 can be made by using a patients x-ray, the CT scan or CAT scan of that individual’s chest, and the full clinical picture including their medical history, their clinical symptoms and how their course of illness proceeds.
“This may include ruling out other bacterial or virus infections such as influenza as the cause of their illness. COVID-19 can also cause a very characteristic picture on a CAT scan of a chest that when combined with the clinical features can be used to make a clinical diagnosis.”
Box said adding this information gives health officials a better sense of the impact of COVID-19 and they can capture more of these clinical diagnosis case reports.
The website can be accessed at https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/.
