Governor expected to discuss underreported COVID-19 deaths
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — The discovery of as many as 4,000 unreported COVID-19 deaths in Ohio came when the state Health Department was reconciling an internal death certificate database with a database maintained by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the state auditor’s office said Thursday.
Republican Auditor Keith Faber has been auditing Health Department coronavirus death data since September. But the agency didn’t have access to the CDC’s infectious diseases database because of federal health privacy laws, said Matt Eiselstein, Faber’s communications director.
“We were never able to make that reconciliation ourselves to come up with those figures,” Eiselstein said. The final audit is expected next month.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was expected to provide more details Thursday about the underreported deaths, which are more than a third of reported deaths to date.
The Ohio Department of Health says those deaths will now be added to the state’s tally of deaths from the coronavirus during the coming week.
Health officials say “process issues affecting the reconciliation and reporting of these deaths” began in October, with most occurring in November and December. The department identified the problem during a routine employee training, officials said.
Adding the deaths will inflate daily reported death counts for two or three days, but the appropriate date of deaths will be reflected on the state’s COVID-19 dashboard, the health department said. DeWine scheduled an afternoon briefing to discuss coronavirus updates.
The announcement of the underreported deaths came Wednesday night and followed an appearance by state Health Director Stephanie McCloud before the House Finance Committee during which McCloud said nothing of the discrepancy.
“Our members have a number of questions and concerns on this issue,” said Taylor Jach, spokesperson for Republican House Speaker Bob Cupp. “We anticipate this topic will be covered in a future committee hearing.”
As of Wednesday, the state was reporting a total of 11,856 confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths, including 10,522 confirmed deaths and 1,334 considered probable under the expanded death definition by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Also Thursday, the state human services agency blamed an enormous increase in the number of weekly first-time jobless claims on fraud.
The state said Ohioans filed 140,444 Ohioans filed initial claims for unemployment compensation for the week ending Feb. 6, far above the 47,786 claims filed the previous week.
The “Office of Unemployment Insurance Operations is investigating all claims that were flagged for potential fraud and taking steps to implement more robust identity verification in the traditional unemployment program, as well as other measures,” the Department of Job and Family Services said.
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Farnoush Amiri is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
