COVID-19 Death Reporting – Global Implications
Ever since Florida switched its COVID-19 death reporting from as-reported date every day to as-of-actual date reporting aperiodically, death reporting has continued to confuse reporters, scientists, and database managers. Now other states are reporting a mix of these methods so it is very difficult to get an accurate measure of total deaths in the US. Furthermore, other countries have had similar issues with death reporting including not reporting or underreporting deaths totally compared to alternative methods which rely on excess deaths - current year compared to previous years’ averages. We discuss 4 different ways that COVID-19 deaths can be tracked for Florida. 1. Health and Human Services (HHS) ask hospitals around the country to report deaths every day (red curve). It is the most accurate and timely way to track deaths but it does not count all deaths since many occur outside the hospital system. 2. Florida’s Department of Health (FL-DOH) reports deaths t