State health officials are addressing skepticism about how big a role COVID-19 actually plays in the deaths attributed to it. State Health Commissioner Dr. Kris Box says a recent data report from the National Center for Health Statistics about what death certificates say about deaths from COVID-19 has been widely misinterpreted on social media.
“In there, they mention that six percent of the death certificates had only COVID listed as a cause of death,” Box explains. “So automatically, some of the social media individuals decided, ‘Well, the other 94 percent did not die from COVID-19 so that instead of having 180,000 or over that in the United States, we had 9,000 deaths from COVID-19,’ which is absolutely incorrect.”
During state officials’ COVID-19 press conference Wednesday, Box stressed that just because a doctor determines that someone had underlying health conditions, it doesn’t mean COVID-19 wasn’t a contributing cause of death.
Family and Social Services Administration Secretary Dr. Jennifer Sullivan noted that Indiana requires multiple layers of confirmation before a COVID-19 death is reported. She added that Hoosiers should have complete confidence in the system. “Specifically, there have been questions asked, for example, ‘If someone dies in a motorcycle accident and they happen to have COVID-19, do we count that as a COVID death?’ And the answer is ‘No.’ This is done very appropriately.”
Dr. Box also noted that any deaths that doctors believe are COVID-related but don’t have an associated positive test are listed separately in the state’s reporting.
