Question about the COVID-19 death tally

[Louis1895]

If someone who was not tested for COVID-19 dies from a serious illness caused by the coronavirus, is a post-mortem test run to deterimine COVID-19? If so and the result is positive, is the positive result entered into the total reported? Asked another way, are there many deaths caused by coronavirus that are not showing up in the statistics?

Apologies if this has been asked before.

[MineralMan]

1. I suspect that varies from location to location.

Testing people who have died is probably not a high priority, given the shortage of tests and the time needed to process them.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. I don't know but I doubt it.

Tests are in such short supply that they probably aren't using a lot of them on dead people. The numbers we see are certainly not the whole story, since at least in the US you don't get tested at all unless you meet some strict criteria, and in many cases not unless you are sick enough to be hospitalized. Some people probably die without ever being tested. The people who are hospitalized, test positive and then die are counted but if someone dies without ever being tested they probably are neither tested nor counted.

[Celerity]

3. that is part of the problem here (Sweden) and I assume will be in the US, as both countries

have powerful political motivations to make the death tallies lower, the US because of Rump, Sweden because of our insane refusal to lock it all down (we are the only advanced nation in the world other than the US who has not went to national lockdown stance.)

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

6. Since you are following the situation in Sweden, do you know

what is also going on in Denmark? Are they testing deceased people also? The rest of the article this chart came from is behind a paywall.

[Celerity]

8. not sure about Denmark & post-mortem testing, I am following Sweden as we live in central Stockholm

the UK, where I grew up at, is even worse

here are the deaths in the four main Nordic nations and the UK

https://c19.se/

[dewsgirl]

4. Unfortunately.😔 no, no country that I know of is doing this.

[defacto7]

5. I have read that post mortem tests are being done depending

on the test availability, country and work load. It's not the highest priority. I think the amount of post mortem tests are pretty low considering.

[MontanaMama]

7. My FIL died in the hospital on March 11th.

He had a respiratory infection for a week that steadily got worse. My husband took him to the ER on a Saturday and he died the following Wednesday. Nobody suggested testing him. When they took him off the respirator, he died within minutes. We still wonder if he had COVID. We will never know.

[renate]

12. I'm so sorry

I can’t imagine how it feels, to not know what happened and to always wonder whether he was a part of this massive event. In a way it doesn’t matter, but any sudden and mysterious death must leave this unanswerable question of “why”?

I’m so very sorry for your loss.

[MontanaMama]

13. Thank you.

Honestly, if he had to go, I'm glad we went quickly and before this hit on the scale that it is now. At least he died with family around him. The weight of knowing how many people die alone, with no one holding their hand, with no goodbyes is unbearable at times. I can't imagine what millions are going through.

[MerryBlooms]

9. Not nearly enough. Government wants the numbers to stay artificially low,

same reason they've decided testing in general isn't that important.

[Maeve]

10. The final count of deaths attributable to Covid will not come out for a long time

Statisticians will compare "expected" death tolls vs actual deaths over the period of the outbreak and that will be the range of numbers that historians will cite. For example, the 1918-1920 flu epidemic is estimated at anywhere from 17.4 to 50 million deaths worldwide (with speculation that it could have been 100 million)
Even today, we have delayed death tolls---Hurricane Maria's hit on Puerto Rico went from 64 to 2,975.

[Ms. Toad]

11. I can't give you a universal answer -

But I know that in at least some locations there are not post-mortem examinations to determine if the cause of death was COVID 19.

[Maeve]

14. Today's WashPost give you more of an answer (free article)

The fast-spreading novel coronavirus is almost certainly killing Americans who are not included in the nation’s growing death toll, according to public health experts and government officials involved in the tally.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention counts only deaths in which the presence of the coronavirus is confirmed in a laboratory test. “We know that it is an underestimation,” agency spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said.

A widespread lack of access to testing in the early weeks of the U.S. outbreak means people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted, epidemiologists say. Even now, some people who die at home or in overburdened nursing homes are not being tested, according to funeral directors, medical examiners and nursing home representatives.

Postmortem testing by medical examiners varies widely across the country, and some officials say testing the dead is a misuse of scarce resources that could be used on the living. In addition, some people who have the virus test negative, experts say.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/coronavirus-death-toll-americans-are-almost-certainly-dying-of-covid-19-but-being-left-out-of-the-official-count/2020/04/05/71d67982-747e-11ea-87da-77a8136c1a6d_story.html