Official U.S. Coronavirus Death Count Questioned by Experts as It Nears 10,000 6park.com
Officially, just over 9,600 people have died from coronavirus-related health problems inside the United States. However, The New York Times has spoken to a number of experts who say that figure is a significant underestimate. Hospital officials, doctors, public-health experts, and medical examiners reportedly told the newspaper that they doubt the official count. They say limited resources and inconsistent decision-making from one state or county to the next have driven down the official figure. In some rural areas, coroners say they don’t have the tests they need to detect COVID-19, and experts say some deaths early on in the crisis were likely misidentified as influenza or only described as pneumonia. “We definitely think there are deaths that we have not accounted for,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, which has become the global authority on the tracking of the pandemic.