Link: https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/florida-covid-numbers-face-new-scrutiny-090058319.html
Excerpt:
The impact of the pandemic in Florida “is significantly greater than the official COVID-19 data suggest,” the researchers wrote. They came to that conclusion by comparing the number of estimated deaths for a six-month period in 2020, from March to September, to the actual number of deaths that occurred, a figure known as “excess deaths” because they exceed the estimate.
There were 400,000 excess deaths across the United States in 2020, a spike closely correlated to the coronavirus pandemic.
The lack of testing early in the pandemic may also have undercounted COVID-19 deaths, explains Daniel Weinberger, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health who has also studied the coronavirus and excess deaths.
The issue was further complicated because each state has its own death-counting methodology. “Some states classify a death as due to COVID if a positive molecular test was obtained, while other states allow the death to be classified as due to COVID if there is a suspicion that it was caused by COVID (even without a molecular test),” Weinberger wrote in an email to Yahoo News.
Author(s): Alexander Nazaryan
Publication Date: 30 March 2021
Publication Site: Yahoo News