MORGANTOWN — Anyone opening the Department of Health and Human Resources coronavirus dashboard during the better part of Monday would have seen the death toll at 502.
The real number was 530. Part of the error, Gov. Jim Justice and Bureau of Public Health Commissioner Ayne Amjad said, was 27 deaths that occurred weeks or months ago that were never correctly reported.
Justice opens each of each briefings with the death toll – listing the person’s age and county as reported by DHHR. Justice reported 17 new deaths since his previous Friday report and read off each of those, reaching 503 – a slight discrepancy from the DHHR figure.
Then he read off 27 more, reaching 530.
Amjad explained that when people die from COVID – whether at home or in a hospital or nursing home or other facility – providers are required to immediately fill out a death report, which is available on the DHHR web site.
The death reports go to the local health department and from there to DHHR. In these 27 cases, no one filed a death report. The deaths were just discovered by DHHR’s Vital Registration Office as it was reviewing records.
Most of those incorrectly reported deaths, Amjad said, occurred at hospitals and nursing homes. She speculated the errors might have stemmed from short staffing at the facilities.
“It was a shock to us as well that those were not in our system,” she said.
So they are internally discussing ways to discover COVID-related deaths faster, she said, and sending out reminders that the death reports are required. They are also looking at records to see if there are more incorrectly reported COVID-related deaths and looking for ways to prevent to the errors from happening again.
In more positive news, Justice celebrated a Monday announcement by Pfizer regarding promising results of its COVID vaccine.
“This could be the biggest announcement that we have had in our lifetimes,” he said.
Pfizer and its partner BioNTech announced the results of a first interim analysis of their Phase 3 study of the vaccine, which was found to be more then 90% effective in participants without prior infection.
The vaccine is administered in two doses, they said, and protection was achieved 28 days after the initial dose. Expanded clinical trials will continue.
COVID-19 Czar Clay Marsh further explained the report. “This is a big deal.”
He and state health officials were on a call earlier in the day with the CDC, he said, to solidify distribution plans when a lead vaccine, whichever company has one, is ready. There will be a priority scheme, with first responders and the most vulnerable residents getting vaccinated first.
So into 2021 at some point, as they find out which vaccines work – with Pfizer’s being a lead candidate at this point – they’ll start to distribute the vaccine in close collaboration with the CDC.
But people need to keep wearing masks and get tested in the meantime, he said, because people will keep getting sick.
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