Kansas’ grandmother Lovell of Brown, Brown, mysteriously becomes the first official death of US COVID

A Kansas great-grandmother has become the first official death of COVID in the US, but her family had no idea until this week. For a year, on February 6, 2020, the death of a San Jose woman had been considered the first death by COVID in the US. But three months ago, a doctor quietly added COVID-19 pneumonia to Lovell’s “Cookie” Brown death certificate as a cause that contributed to his death on January 9, 2020. As part of an investigation into early unreported deaths from COVID, He Mercury News used data from the Kansas Department of Health, which lists dates and counties of deaths by COVID, to track Brown’s family. Her daughter, Peaches Foster, finally picked up a copy of the amended death certificate in court this week and cried.

Although Foster suspected his mother died of COVID, the news raises more questions than he answers about when and how COVID entered the U.S. He Wednesday has found five death certificates since January 2020 — in California, Oklahoma, Alabama, Wisconsin and Kansas — that had recently been changed to include COVID as a contributing factor.