A new study from Virginia Commonwealth University suggests the death rate from COVID-19 is higher than reported. Sandy Hausman spoke with its lead author about the under-count, what some states have done wrong during the pandemic and how this state has performed.
Based on records from previous years, this country saw 20% more deaths between March first and the end of July than we would have seen in normal times. At Virginia Commonwealth University, Dr. Steven Woolf studied the numbers and found 65% of those deaths were due to COVID-19. Others, he says, could also have been triggered by the coronavirus.
“It’s quite likely that we will continue to learn much more in the months and years to come about this virus, and many causes of death that we think were unrelated may turn out to be caused by COVID-19," he explains.
"For example, the virus causes an inflammatory reaction in the blood vessels that causes blood clots, and the result of those blood clots can be a heart attack or stroke or kidney failure.”
Patients might not have developed the symptoms usually associated with COVID-19, and tests were not done after death to check for that possibility.
"Many of these deaths occur at home," Woolf says. "The emergency medical team arrives, and the patient has passed away. They may not get any laboratory confirmation of whether they did or did not have COVID-19. They may have a pre-existing condition of heart disease and stroke, so the person having collapsed from a heart attack, we may never know whether they had COVID-19 or not."
In addition, he says, there were people who died at home, because they feared catching COVID at the hospital or doctor's office.
"Some of those people who collapsed at home died because they were scared to go to the emergency room."
Others put off chemotherapy, took their own lives in the midst of a mental health crisis or overdosed on drugs.
In their study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Woolf and his colleagues also praised states like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts for their handling of the pandemic.
"If you look at their epidemic curve, it looks like a capital A. It spiked in April. They reacted with a robust public policy response, controlled community spread, bent the curve and by May they had numbers back to baseline."
On the other hand, Woolf says sunbelt states like Florida, Texas and Arizona re-opened too soon.
"What happened to them, instead, was a protracted surge that really intensified in June and July and resulted in not only excess deaths but a much longer crisis, and that probably harmed the economy more than necessary."
He adds that Virginia was a model -- resisting calls to reopen before it was safe to do so.
"I think Virginia has done a good job. It was one of the states that enacted a longer lockdown and was careful about staging a re-opening. There have been hiccups along the way, but definitely a lot of good measures have been taken."
Thirty-two thousand, five hundred Virginians died between March 1 and August 1 – 4,500 more than the VCU team expected. Half of those were attributed to COVID. We don’t yet know how many of the others could also be linked in some way to the pandemic.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
