Estimating Unreported Deaths from Natural Causes during COVID-19

  1. Benjamin Stear
  2. Kyle M. Hernandez
  3. Vidya Manian
  4. Deanne Taylor
  5. Catharine A. Conley

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Abstract

Efforts to mitigate the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in the United States require an accurate understanding of how the epidemic is progressing. The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) releases weekly numbers of deaths attributed to a set of ‘select causes’, including deaths from COVID-19 in the entire United States (US), by state, and cumulatively for individual counties. Comparing US and state level deaths from select causes recorded in 2020 with values from 2014-2019 identifies a number of differences that exceeded 95% confidence limits on historical mean values, including three states with deaths possibly from COVID-19 in December 2019. Comparing county-level NCHS datasets with county-level data on deaths from COVID-19 compiled by four public pandemic tracking sites suggests that a large number of COVID-19 deaths have not yet been reported to the NCHS. Dividing the numbers of COVID-19 deaths counted by the public tracking sites by the percentage of COVID-19 deaths reported to the NCHS suggests that approximately 20% of all US deaths from Natural Causes, as many as 200,000, may not yet have been reported to the NCHS. Evaluating changes in the fractions of deaths attributed to COVID-19 and other specific causes or nonspecific outcomes during the epidemic, relative to 2020 totals or historical mean values, can provide a valuable perspective on the public health consequences of COVID-19.

Significance Statement

Estimating total deaths from natural causes using the percentage of natural cause deaths from COVID-19 reported to the CDC and the number of COVID-19 deaths counted by public tracking sites suggests that up to 200,000 deaths from natural causes between 22 April and 15 August, 2020, around 20% of the total recorded as of 26 August, have not yet been reported to the CDC.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.29.20184176 on medRxiv