Editor’s note on this story: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not “backpedal” on the number of deaths caused by COVID-19, reducing the figure from nearly 154,000 to just over 9,000, as social media posts claimed. Read more here.
According to a report from KARK, a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report released last week contained new data that showed 94 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the United States also had contributing conditions.
According to the report, just six percent of coronavirus deaths have “COVID-19” as the only cause mentioned, revealing that 94 percent of patients who died from coronavirus also had other “health conditions and contributing causes.”
The CDC listed the following as just some of the top contributing conditions linked to coronavirus deaths: Influenza and pneumonia, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, diabetes, cardiac arrest, and heart or renal failure, and vascular and unspecified dementia.
The CDC also stated that its data uses provisional death counts to deliver the most complete and accurate picture of lives lost to COVID-19. These numbers are based on information from death certificates, which the CDC says are the most reliable source of data, and reportedly contain information not available anywhere else, including co-morbid conditions, race and ethnicity, and place of death.
The CDC also stated that provisional data is not yet complete, provisional counts are not final and subject to change, and that readers should not compare death counts across states.
