Local News

State’s COVID-19 death toll goes down after reconciliation

CHARLESTON -- A review of 2021 death certificates by West Virginia health officials saw the state's death toll attributed to COVID-19 go down.

According to the Department of Health and Human Resources, a reverse-death reconciliation review found that 122 of the nearly 4,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 in West Virginia in 2021 were determined not to be COVID-19 deaths along with five duplicates, reducing the 2021 COVID-19 death toll to 3,821 for the year.

"It is a part of our death reporting process that we reconcile the deaths from last year," said Dr. Ayne Amjad, the state health officer and commissioner of DHHR's bureau of public health, speaking during Gov. Jim Justice's Tuesday virtual briefing with reporters. "After reviewing the COVID-19 death reports to the death certificates for 2021, 122 were found not to be COVID-19-related, hence the 122 were removed from our dashboard."

Hospitals and healthcare providers send COVID-19 death reports to DHHR when a death can be attributed to COVID with death certificates completed at a later date. DHHR later compares its COVID-19 death data to the final death certificates to either subtract or add to the death total.

"We still have the COVID-19 death reports our providers are submitting so we accurately report COVID-19 deaths in a timely manner," Amjad said. "This is an ongoing process, and we appreciate all the providers who are still filling out those reports so we have timely information and we will continue to review them as necessary to get accurate data."

Until last year, there was no electronic means for providers to submit death certificates to DHHR. Discrepancies in COVID-19 deaths at the end of 2020 and beginning of 2021 during the state's first COVID wave caused Justice to demand an investigation. It was determined the issue was not caused by willful intent to not report deaths, but a combination of a lack of electronic reporting system and a wave of COVID-19 deaths overwhelming providers.

DHHR commissioned the creation of an electronic COVID-19 death reporting system last March, with the new system in place by the end of December. Since then, reconciliation of data between the daily COVID death reports and death certificates has continued, but Amjad said her staff have caught back up, though she said she expects some reconciliation to still happen.

"Even though we've gone electronic with our death certificates, the COVID-19 death reports that we've asked providers to fill out to give us the daily numbers we can provide to our dashboard and the reconciliation process does take a little bit of time to go back until we can get the actual certificate of the person who passed away," Amjad said. "From January until April is just going to take some time to review those again, though it should be shortened now that we've gone electronic."

Additionally, three deaths were removed from the 2020 COVID-19 death toll. According to DHHR, West Virginia's COVID-19 death total as of Tuesday was 6,716. The state reported 11 additional deaths since last Friday's briefing, including seven new deaths as of Tuesday.

"One is one too many," Justice said. "I go back to the 11 that we've lost and ask that you join in prayer for them."