Story at a glance
- As testing becomes more widely available, medical examiners are reevaluating old cases for ties to COVID-19.
- The coronavirus pandemic has only added to an already overwhelming workload for examiners’ offices.
- Some say it might be impossible to determine the total number of deaths due to COVID-19.
As public health experts and researchers learn more about COVID-19, it’s clear that many early cases and deaths have gone undiagnosed. The question is, how many?
“Almost certainly we missed cases. That’s a given,” Snohomish County’s Chief Medical Examiner J. Matthew Lacy told The Seattle Times. “We almost certainly missed cases where people actually died of COVID because they were either reported to us early in the year, the symptoms weren’t given to us or they were symptomatic in a way that was ascribed to another disease.”
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Washington’s Department of Health told The Associated Press on May 21 that it was investigating whether about 3,000 deaths from respiratory illnesses were actually due to undiagnosed COVID-19. But a health statistics manager for the department said it’s likely “we just won’t ever know” how many actually died of COVID-19.
“It’s clearly not possible to follow up on all 3,000 deaths,” Katie Hutchinson told The Seattle Times, because there aren’t blood or tissue samples available in most cases. “Nor would we want to, because it’s not uncommon over the course of the year for people to die of these conditions.”
The first confirmed deaths from COVID-19 are now thought to have occurred in early February in Santa Clara, Calif. On Feb. 25, The New York Times published an investigation revealing an overburdened death investigation system — but the coronavirus was not mentioned. It was still early, and the opioid epidemic accounted for much of the autopsy crisis, the paper reported.
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There are abour 500 full-time, board-certified forensic pathologists in the U.S., according to the National Commission on Forensic Science. And as the death toll from the coronavirus crisis continues to rise, their workload has grown. Thomas Gilson, the Cuyahoga County medical examiner, told The New York Times that many offices are struggling to finish their cases within the time frame mandated by the National Association of Medical Examiners.
“We’re getting to this precipice where we’re not going to have enough people to do the grunt work,” Gilson said. “There are eight doctors in my shop. Only one of them is under 50. She’ll be all by herself in 10 years!”
As the coronavirus pandemic continues, medical examiners are also facing renewed scrutiny over their relationships with law enforcement after the death of George Floyd. Two different interpretations of an autopsy on Floyd raised questions about the level of subjectivity in the field.
Joye Carter, forensic pathologist to the sheriff of San Luis Obispo County, California, told FiveThirtyEight that the reports are “just different ways of describing the same thing.” The complexity of individual autopsies can cause confusion, not just for the legal system, but also for public health experts tracking the death toll of COVID-19.
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MICHIGAN BARBER WHO DISOBEYED STAY-AT-HOME RESTRICTIONS ORDERED TO CLOSE SHOP
TEXAS REPORTS SINGLE-DAY HIGH IN CORONAVIRUS DEATHS TWO WEEKS AFTER REOPENING
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