More than 16,000 COVID-19 deaths in early nursing homes likely went unaccounted for: study

According to a Harvard University study, a delayed start of mandatory reporting resulted in as many as 16,623 deaths from the CCP virus in nursing homes being omitted from the official tally.

The federal government did not require nursing homes to report cases and deaths of COVID-19 until May 24, 2020, more than three months after the first nursing home outbreak at Life Care Center in Kirkland, Washington. During the first reporting period, establishments were also given the option of whether or not to report back data.

Kirkland’s Life Care Center, for example, reported no cases or deaths of COVID-19 in its first submission to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even though a CDC investigation a month earlier had linked 81 cases and 23 deaths in the establishment.

The CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus, is the pathogen that causes COVID-19.

While it is still unclear how many nursing facilities chose not to report retrospective CCP virus cases and deaths in the early months of the pandemic, the Harvard study came to an estimate in collecting data on cases and deaths from the states that collected the information. The researchers then compared state and federal data to estimate the likelihood of cases and deaths going unreported. The estimates were then used to obtain a cumulative number of cases and deaths across all nursing homes.

“To our knowledge, no previous study has used available data sources in combination with federal data to estimate national COVID-19 nursing home cases and deaths. This study aims to fill that gap, ”says the study, which was led by Karen Shen in the Department of Economics at Harvard University.

The study estimates that nearly 40% of COVID-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes were missed nationwide by May 24, 2020. The percentage of unreported deaths was particularly high in New York City, in Maryland and Florida, according to the study, which examined death reporting samples from 19 states.

The study found no specific characteristics, such as region, ownership, or valuation, among facilities that did not retrospectively report cases and deaths from the CCP virus.

‘This implies that establishments of all types have omitted previous cases and deaths in the first NHSN [National Healthcare Safety Network] submission, ”the study reads. “This may demonstrate a widespread inability of nursing homes to reliably collect data early in the pandemic or that pressures to report fewer cases and deaths were common across all facilities.”