Ohio changes how it reports virus deaths
After failing to timely report more than 4,000 deaths, the Ohio Department of Health is moving to a different mortality reporting method beginning Tuesday that will take longer to disclose deaths, but be more accurate, officials say.
The state will rely solely on deathcertificate reporting data to detect and report COVID-19 deaths, state health director Stephanie Mccloud announced Tuesday ahead of a temporary reduction of the death toll among Ohioans by 596. Since most death certificates are not filed with the state system until four to six weeks later, the virus fatalities reported by the state will not be as prompt as the near realtime system that tracks infectious diseases in Ohio, officials said.
Instead of posting daily death numbers on its online coronavirus dashboard, the state now will post updated morality figures about twice a week as death certificate information is vetted by federal health authorities, verified and returned to the state.
The move to using death certificates to count fatalities will cause a temporary, upfront downtick in death numbers for about a week, Mccloud said.
As of Monday, health officials had reported 17,346 virus deaths — with 93% occurring among Ohioans age 60 and older — as the pandemic in Ohio nears the one-year mark on March 9.
However, with the change in confirming fatalities by death certificates, the state reduced the death toll among Ohioans by 596 to 16,750 on Tuesday. Most of the removed deaths are likely to be included once confirmed. Some Ohioans’ deaths occurred in other states, but are included in the state total. The state, for the first time, also reported the number of out-of-state residents to die in Ohio of the virus at 439.
The disease reporting system used by hospitals, health districts and others provides more prompt information, Mccloud said, but is not as ultimately accurate as the “gold standard” death certificate system. Probable deaths no longer will be included in totals with the change in reporting. Mccloud said the removal of a manual reconciliation process between the disease and death certificate reporting systems will improve accuracy.
The underreporting problem began in October when an employee manually reconciling data between the death certificate system and a disease reporting system to compile COVID-19 deaths became overwhelmed as cases and deaths began to soar.
The problem with identifying deaths was discovered Feb. 2 during training for new employees, prompting the state to subsequently add an additional 4,275 deaths to the virus fatality toll, which rose by 38% with the previously undisclosed numbers.
The employee responsible for reconciling the death numbers resigned and the state epidemiologist directing the Bureau of Infectious Diseases was reassigned. Agreeing with Gov. Mike Dewine that Ohio has underfunded public health over the years, Mccloud hopes lawmakers will provide the funding needed to update and replace the health department’s aged datagathering systems.
The Dispatch filed a request for an electronic copy of the death certificate database from the Ohio Department of Health on April 20, 2020 to examine COVID-19 deaths, but the agency refused its release, claiming it was not a public record for multiple reasons.
Contending the database was withheld in violation of public records laws, The Dispatch pressed its case for months until the health department provided a copy in mid-october.
However, the state withheld names and addresses, contending the identities of the deceased are protected health information even though they appear on publicly available death certificates. The COVID-19 death numbers contained in the database in October were in line with what the state then was reporting on its online coronavirus data dashboard.
The Dispatch filed a public records complaint in the Ohio Court of Claims against the health department on Jan. 28 seeking the release of the withheld names and addresses. The complaint is pending and awaiting mediation.
Meanwhile, 1,709 new COVID-19 infections were reported Tuesday. Cases fell 6.2% last week to an average of 1,978 a day. The state reported 38,308 additional vaccinations on Tuesday, raising the total to 1,725,712 or 14.8% of Ohio’s population.