Researchers propose ways to address the challenges associated with measuring direct and indirect deaths COVID-19 Pandemic.
Estimating deaths from COVID-19 based on death certificate data greatly underestimates the actual death rate from the pandemic. Authors from Stanford University Medical School, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, and Harvard Medical School describe how death and death toll assessment methods can be used in disaster and other pandemics to provide a more accurate Get picture of COVID -19 death rates now and onwards. This means measuring direct, indirect and excessive deaths from COVID-19. Your proposed solution will be published in Internal Medicine Annals.
Overcoming challenges in calculating direct deaths requires consensus among healthcare institutions, medical examiners, and public health authorities. The authors advocate counting all deaths from pneumonia, influenza-like illness, and COVID-19 and subtracting the expected seasonal number of cases of pneumonia and influenza calculated from trends over the past 5 years, as is currently done by the centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
To calculate indirect deaths, the researchers recommend applying the CDC’s “but for” principle, which is used in determining deaths related to disasters: “But for those [pandemic]Would the person have died doing it? “Expected recommendations from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine could help. And calculating excessive deaths requires publicly available, well-curated historical data with published application programming interfaces. Addressing these issues is critical to our understanding of the pandemic, according to the authors and their effects on human life.
The author of a companion article from Merck & Co. agrees that reliable and timely information on direct and indirect mortality from the COVID-19 pandemic is essential. The most accurate data used to assess mortality in the United States for any reason comes from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS). Since this data is critical to health and emergency preparedness information in the United States, it is well worth a bigger investment.
References:
“Every Body Counts: Measuring Mortality from the COVID-19 Pandemic” by Mathew V. Kiang, ScD, MPH; Rafael A. Irizarry, PhD; Caroline O. Buckee, DPhil and Dr. Satchit Balsari, MPH, September 11th 2020, Internal Medicine Annals.
DOI: 10.7326 / M20-3100
Julie Louise Gerberding, MD, MPH, Sep 11, 2020, “Measuring the Impact of Pandemics: Vital Signs From Vital Statistics”, Internal Medicine Annals.
DOI: 10.7326 / M20-6348
