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Nearly a quarter of the people Colorado said died from coronavirus don’t have COVID-19 on their death certificate

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment announced a change to how it tallies coronavirus deaths amid complaints that it inflated numbers

early a quarter of the people reported as coronavirus deaths in state statistics don’t have the virus listed on their death certificates — at least not yet — the state Health Department said Friday, adding more uncertainty to how many people the virus has killed in Colorado.

The number of coronavirus deaths in state figures topped 1,000 earlier this week, and the number stood at 1,150 deaths as of Friday afternoon. But officials with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment revealed during a call with reporters that that number does not represent the number of people who have died due to COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

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Instead, the death figure CDPHE has been providing for weeks is more accurately described as the number of people with COVID-19 who have died — for any reason. The number of people who have died and have COVID-19 listed on their death certificate is 24% lower: 878, according to CDPHE’s latest figures.

“We recognize that there certainly has been confusion around this topic,” Dr. Rachel Herlihy, the state epidemiologist, said during the call.

But even this latest revelation does little to clarify the battle over the virus’ death toll, which has become one of the most contentious and politically rancorous fights of the pandemic. A Republican state representative has called for a criminal investigation of CDPHE. The coroner of Montezuma County joined the media call unexpectedly Friday to directly question state officials about their reporting of death numbers. And politicians and political activists across the country have engaged in heated debate about whether the pandemic’s toll has been inflated or undercounted.

The issue even drew a pointed response from Gov. Jared Polis at his own news conference on Friday.

“What the people of Colorado want to know is not who died with COVID-19, but who died of COVID-19,” said Polis, who has rarely expressed such public frustration with his health leadership before. “And the numbers are very close, of course. There’s only a few cases that we’re aware of where there is some gray area. But where there is a gray area, we should always use — for reporting — the numbers that come from the physician or the coroner that actually addressed the patient or inspected the body.”

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https://coloradosun.com/2020/05/15/colorado-coronavirus-death-certificate/