Ohio begins adding 4k deaths to COVID-19 totals following data collection error

Ohio Department of Health officials announced this week that they had overlooked about 4,000 deaths that occurred over the past several months and would begin reporting them to the public this week (Source: “Ohio Begins Adding In 4,000 Overlooked Covid Deaths,” New York Times, Feb. 12).

The first 650 or so of Ohio’s older deaths were reported Thursday, accounting for about 17% of all coronavirus deaths announced nationwide that day. On Friday the Ohio Department of Health reported about 2,500 additional deaths. The backlog in Ohio was expected to inflate the national death average in the coming days.

“You’ll see a jump today, tomorrow, maybe the next day,” Gov. Mike DeWine said at a news conference on Thursday. “We’re not sure exactly how many days it’s going to take, but you’re going to see a distorted number.”

During a routine employee training event, Ohio health officials discovered that thousands of deaths, some of which dated back to October, had not been properly merged between one reporting system and another, according to an ODH press release. “This was a failure of reconciliation not taking place,” Gov. DeWine said, “so we’re getting that straightened out.”