94% of COVID-19 deaths in USA had 'other contributing health conditions'; Only 6% list Coronavirus alone
It has been revealed that just 6 percent of deaths attributed to coronavirus in the United States list Covid-19 as the only cause.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 94 percent of Covid-19 attributed deaths involved victims with other "health conditions and contributing causes."
The CDC report explains, "For 6% of the deaths, COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned."
Six percent of USA coronavirus deaths would equate to 9,683 deaths. As of Monday 31 August, there were 182,149 deaths attributed to Covid-19, according to the CDC. Confirmed cases of Coronavirus in the United States has now surpassed 6 million.
Of the other 94 percent of coronavirus deaths that have listed other contributing causes, those conditions included influenza and pneumonia, heart failure, diabetes, respiratory failure, hypertensive disease, vascular and unspecified dementia, cardiac arrest, renal failure, intentional and unintentional injury and poisoning.
The CDC states that the statistics are based "on death certificates, which are the most reliable source of data and contain information not available anywhere else, including comorbid conditions, race and ethnicity, and place of death."
Comorbidity is defined by the CDC as "having more than one disease or condition … present in the same person at the same time."
It adds: "Conditions described as comorbidities are often chronic or long-term conditions. Other names to describe comorbid conditions are coexisting or co-occurring conditions and sometimes also 'multimorbidity' or 'multiple chronic conditions'."
Currently, the seven day average for new cases of Covid-19 in the United States stands at about 41,000. That is down significantly from the nearly 67,000 cases per-day average during America's peak in July, according to the Covid Tracking Project.
Worldwide there are more than 25 million confirmed cases of coronavirus, and more than 846,000 deaths attributed to Covid-19. As at the end of August 2020, the United States has the highest number of confirmed Covid-19 cases in the world, with more than 6 million. Brazil has the next highest with 3.86 million, and India (3.62 million) and Russia (0.98 million) following on the list. However, comparisons can only tell so much as different countries have widely varying testing regimes, and different ways of attributing deaths to Covid-19.