Despite promising signs, New Jersey mortality remains underestimated, data suggests

New Jersey Deaths from coronavirus Marked a tragic milestone on Friday: Over 10,000 illnesses in the state have killed more than 10,000 lives for over two months.

“Think for a moment,” Governor Phil Murphy said in his daily news briefing. “It’s a phenomenal number.”

However, despite the ever-increasing death toll, new state moral statistics suggest that official figures continue to understate the effect of the virus by up to 22%.

This is 2,251 additional unexplained deaths, exceeding the 10,138 deaths currently caused by COVID-19 in New Jersey.

Nonetheless, preliminary data for these deaths also show promising trends. The overall mortality rate in May has continued at unusually high levels, but it is not as dramatic as April, the devastating month for New Jersey. Figures released by the State Health Statistics Center on Friday indicate that Murphy has begun to relax restrictions on daily life.

“I think we have made tremendous progress,” Murphy said. “But not yet outside the forest.”

This may be a limitation given that state official mortality counts are based on laboratory confirmed cases of coronavirus and not all are tested for this disease. .. Whatever the cause, New Jersey has seen a sharp increase in deaths since a pandemic has hit old-age homes, strained hospitals, and eradicated the economy since March. I will.

Updated mortality figures show that over the past 11 weeks, regardless of the cause, there has been an increase of 12,389, or 1 million more deaths than typical in the past few years. A total of 27,866 people died in New Jersey, but the average for the same period from 2015 to 2019 was 15,477.

Statistics are part of Ongoing analysis Track mortality during the largest public health crisis of at least a century with NJ Advance Media. The state’s new provisional values ​​include updated numbers that account for the first two weeks of May and additional deaths, especially in the brutal months of March and April.

Excess mortality figures represent another way to plot disease damage, capturing more than death that might have been overlooked. They also talk about what could be the indirect effects of the virus, such as those who died of treatable illnesses who did not seek treatment. —A man who has a heart attack at home instead of risking going to the hospital with chest pain.

This increase was particularly pronounced, with 16,849 deaths recorded in April. This is more than a 175% increase over the 6,090 deaths typically seen. So far, May is less dramatic, but continues to show overkill. In the first two weeks of the month, 3,362 deaths were reported, an increase of 615 or 22% over normal.

It ran alongside other hopeful markers that Murphy struck, hospitalization has significantly decreased over the last few weeks, as has the number of patients on intensive care and ventilators. Murphy has begun to lift the blockade near the state, reopening parks and golf courses, allowing more retailers to offer curbside pickup and resume non-critical construction, so it did. ..

Murphy announced Thursday that it would outline plans to reopen the beach and lake by Memorial Day weekend and allow Friday to resume scheduled surgery.

There is Many reasons Why understated official deaths in the state are underreported, say doctors and epidemiologists. For one thing, New Jersey lacks the resources to test everyone for the virus, and rests some who may have died undetected.

Some people die at home without going to the hospital, while others have not been tested. In some deaths, doctors may be responsible for more common illnesses such as heart disease, especially in older people who have underlying illnesses. In other cases, the death certificate may not be consistently filled in, some doctors list coronavirus as a putative factor, others do not.

Over the course of the 11-week period, 19 out of 21 counties in the state recorded over-death, with the exception of southern Salem and Cape May counties. In 15 counties, additional deaths exceeded COVID-19 deaths in state communities.

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Riley Yates has [email protected]..