Ohio To Add 4,000 COVID-19 Deaths To Overall Count

Thursday, February 11, 2021 at 12:24 PM

By Ohio Department of Health, news release

Process issues affecting the reconciliation and reporting of these deaths began in October.

Shutterstock photo.

(Columbus, Oh.) - The Ohio Department of Health (ODH) announced today that as many as 4,000 COVID-19 deaths may have been underreported through the state’s reporting system. These deaths will be added to the state’s death count during the coming week.

Process issues affecting the reconciliation and reporting of these deaths began in October. The largest number of deaths were from November and December. Although being reported this week, the deaths will reflect the appropriate date of death on the state’s COVID-19 dashboard.

ODH will continue working with the Auditor of State’s office, which has been engaged in an audit of COVID-19 data since September of 2020.

The issue related to the unreconciled COVID-19 deaths was identified by the Ohio Department of Health during a routine employee training.

As these deaths are added to the counts, the daily reported death counts will be high for a two to three-day period. After this increase, normal processes will resume, with increased quality assurance related to the death reconciliation process.