CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – On Tuesday night, more than 536,000 people in the United States died due to COVID-19, including more than 5,600 Yowans.
Several experts told our KCRG-TV9 i9 research unit that these figures are likely to be higher than reported.
This is because many Iowans die from COVID-19-like symptoms and these cases are not necessarily being investigated further. Death certificates found i9 show that Iowans die from respiratory conditions due to an underlying cause of pneumonia. County staff members also told us about a similar trend.
Dr. James Gill, who is the chief forensic doctor in Connecticut, said these are cases that need to be further investigated because there is likely to be another condition that causes pneumonia.
“Pneumonia alone raises some questions,” Gill said. “Well, ‘why did that person get pneumonia’ and that’s the question you have to ask? ‘
Gill said deaths from pneumonia could be caused by a large number of underlying illnesses, including dementia, homicide or even COVID-19.
“I mean we’ve had deaths where someone was certified as pneumonia and it’s fixed and found out, then, that they have pneumonia because they’re quadriplegic because they got a shot two years ago,” Gill said. “And so the gunshot wound is actually the underlying cause of death, and if you don’t look for that underlying cause of the cause of death, you’ll miss death like that.”
Gill also said that at the start of the pandemic, Connecticut was seeing many death certificates with certified pneumonia as the original cause, and was later reclassified as dead by COVID-19.
“We went to the funeral home and did a body scan at the funeral home to see if they were infected with COVID or not,” Gill said. “And we have found dozens of positive people with COVID-19 who have been certified as dead by COVID-19. Although the original death certificate did not include COVID-19 as the cause of death.
In Iowa, forensic doctors do not investigate every death. State law only requires that deaths of public interest, such as homicides or contagious diseases, be investigated. This would not include pneumonia or respiratory conditions. Gill said the law handcuffs forensic doctors, in a way, because they often have to rely on doctors and city officials to report cases to them.
Then there are the deaths from COVID-19 that not even forensic doctors knew how to investigate.
Dr. Donald Linder, who is the forensic doctor in Linn County, said that sometimes, when people died with COVID-19, these cases were not initially reported to his office.
“Well, in the early months of the pandemic, we were learning first, second, or third hand that person had COVID,” Linder said. “Anyway, he admits you were supposed to tell us.”
Linder said this and the lack of evidence probably means that the number of deaths reported due to COVID-19 is lower than the actual number of deaths in the state.
“There is no doubt that the deaths were less reported or slipped through the cracks,” Linder said.
Data from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows that deaths increased in 2020 and 2021.
The state has had trouble reporting COVID-19-related deaths in the past. In November, i9 learned that Iowa’s COVID-19 data portal reported the death toll in some counties in the state. At the time, the Appanoose County Health Department reported 27 deaths in the county, but the state data portal reported only 9 deaths.
A similar discrepancy occurred in Linn County. The Linn County Department of Public Health reported 183 deaths as of Wednesday. The state data portal reported 162 deaths.
The discrepancy occurred because the state required a positive PCR test at the time and meant that those who died from the virus and did not have a positive PCR test were not counted as dead. This was changed in December and allows medical professionals to determine if a death was related to the virus.
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