New York on Tuesday decided to add “presumed” COVID-19 cases to its death toll, which reached a total of 10,000 victims.
On Tuesday alone, 3,700 new deaths were added to the revised death count, according to a report from the New York Times.
“These new presumed cases are mostly from ERs and hospitals, which means people weren’t getting tested even in those settings. Lots more were in nursing homes or other long-term care facilities,” NY Times reporter Kristen Danis said.
New York City, already a world epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak, sharply increased its death toll by more than 3,700 victims on Tuesday, after officials said they were now including people who had never tested positive for the virus but were presumed to have died of it.
The new figures, released by the city’s Health Department, drove up the number of people killed in New York City to more than 10,000, and appeared to increase the overall United States death count by 17 percent to more than 26,000.
But for weeks, the Health Department also had been recording additional deaths tied to the virus, according to two people briefed on the matter. Those cases involved people who were presumed to have been infected because of their symptoms and medical history.
They were not included in the counts given publicly by Mayor Bill de Blasio because no tests had confirmed that the victims had the disease, Covid-19.
Officials in California and Seattle said they only included deaths connected to the Coronavirus when the virus was CONFIRMED with a test.
California has less than 800 Coronavirus deaths while New York has counted over 10,000 deaths related to COVID-19. Perhaps one reason why is how the deaths are being categorized?
As TGP previously reported, the amount of Americans who are reported to have died from the Coronavirus is based on a CDC coding system that will “result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.
A new ICD code was established to keep track of Coronavirus deaths.
The U07.1 code will be used for death by Coronavirus infection.
However, there’s another secondary code, U07.2, “for clinical or epidemiological diagnosis of COVID-19 where a laboratory confirmation is inconclusive or not available,” the CDC guidelines read.
Is money a motivating factor in over counting COVID-19 cases?
Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator, told a local station he received a 7-page document coaching him to fill out death certificates with a COVID-19 diagnosis without a lab test to confirm the patient actually had the virus.
Dr. Jensen also disclosed that hospitals are paid more if they list patients with a COVID-19 diagnosis.
NEW: NYC decided to add “presumed” Covid cases to its death toll — which just soared to more than 10,000. Today alone, 3700 new deaths were added. From @jdavidgoodman and @wrashbaumhttps://t.co/fKBjf5gkjd
— Kirsten Danis (@kirstendanis) April 14, 2020
