Doina Chiacu, Maria Caspani – WASHINGTON/NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City, the hardest hit U.S. city in the coronavirus pandemic, revised its official COVID-19 death toll sharply higher to more than 10,000 on Tuesday, to include victims presumed to have perished from the lung disease but never tested.
The new cumulative figure for “confirmed and probable COVID-19 deaths” released by the New York City Health Department marked a staggering increase of over 3,700 deaths formally attributed to the highly contagious illness since March 11.
The 60 percent spike in reported deaths underscored the enormous losses endured in the nation’s most populous city, where the sounds of wailing sirens have echoed almost non-stop through largely empty streets for weeks.
The city’s revised count, 10,367 in all, raised the number of coronavirus deaths nationwide to more than 28,300 – New York accounting for the biggest share of deaths.
With only a tiny fraction of the U.S. population tested for coronavirus, the number of known infections climbed to more than 600,000 as of Tuesday, according to a running Reuters tally.
U.S. public health authorities have generally only attributed deaths to COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, when patients tested positive for the virus.
New York City’s Health Department said it will now also count any fatality deemed a “probable” coronavirus death, defined as a victim whose “death certificate lists as a cause of death ‘COVID-19’ or an equivalent.”
March 11 was used as the starting point because that was the date of the first confirmed coronavirus death, the city said.
“Behind every death is a friend, a family member, a loved on,” said Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot. “We are focused on ensuring that every New Yorker who died because of COVID-19 gets counted.”
The new approach in New York City could pave the way for similar policies elsewhere across the country, possibly leading to a surge in reported U.S. coronavirus mortality.
Even before Tuesday’s revision in New York City, the number of new U.S. deaths on Tuesday had reached at least 2,228, the highest toll yet in a single 24-hour period.
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