‘At times, there are things we need to review, and potentially revisit the way the data is being analyzed…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The state of Pennsylvania was forced to remove hundreds of deaths from its official coronavirus death count after glaring errors in the state’s counting methods came to light.
Pennsylvania began adding “probable deaths” to its total number of deaths, but those “probable” cases were never confirmed with COVID-19 tests.
The state counted them anyways, and as a result the state’s death count nearly doubled in just two days, according to Fox News.
The state’s total death count, however, did not match the numbers Pennsylvania’s local coroners had been reporting, raising questions about the accuracy of the count and the irregularities that had appeared.
Then, all of a sudden, the Pennsylvania Department of Health removed 200 deaths from its total count, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.
“There’s a discrepancy in the numbers. I’m not saying there’s something going on,” said Charles Kiessling Jr., president of the Pennsylvania Coroners Association. “But accuracy is important.”
The state initially claimed that a computer glitch was to blame for the jump in reported deaths, and that the culmination of data from multiple counties had resulted in a mathematical error.
Now, Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine is attributing the discrepancy to the lack of information regarding individual cases.
But she did admit that the state should “revisit” the way it’s counting coronavirus deaths.
“At times, there are things we need to review, and potentially revisit the way the data is being analyzed,” she told the Inquirer. “And this is one of those times.”
Jeffrey Conner, the coroner in Franklin County, said that coroners across the state are growing increasingly “frustrated” with the lack of “leadership” and “definitive answers” from the state.
Coroners should be included in the state’s coronavirus investigations, Kiessling added, because right now they’re being left out of the conversation entirely.
“I know who died. They know who died,” Kiessling said. “We have accurate numbers. We don’t scare everyone to death.”