CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) – As of Tuesday night, more than 536,000 people in the United States died from COVID-19, including more than 5,600 Iowans.
Multiple experts told our KCRG-TV9 i9 Investigative Unit that these numbers are likely higher than reported.
That’s because many Iowans die of COVID-19-like symptoms, and those cases aren’t necessarily investigated further. Death certificates I found show that Iowans die from respiratory illness as a result of an underlying cause of pneumonia. District employees also told us about a similar trend.
Dr. James Gill, the chief medical examiner in Connecticut, said these are cases that require further investigation because there is likely another condition causing pneumonia.
“Pneumonia raises some questions in itself,” said Gill. “Well, ‘why did that person get pneumonia’ and that’s the question you have to ask.”
Gill said pneumonia-induced deaths can be caused by a host of underlying conditions, including dementia, murder, or even COVID-19.
“I mean, we’ve had deaths where someone got pneumonia and you look at it and you find out they have pneumonia because they are paralyzed from being shot two years ago,” said Gill. “And so the gunshot wound is actually the underlying cause of death, and if you don’t look for that underlying reason for the cause of death, you will miss such deaths.”
Gill also said that at the start of the pandemic, Connecticut saw many death certificates with pneumonia certified as the original cause, and later reclassified as COVID-19 deaths.
“We went to funeral homes and took the body off at the funeral home to see if they were COVID infected or not,” Gill said. And we found dozens of people who were positive with COVID-19 and above were certified as COVID-19 deaths. Even though the original death certificate did not list COVID-19 as the cause of death. “
In Iowa, medical researchers don’t investigate every death. State law only requires them to investigate deaths of public interest, such as murders or infectious diseases. That wouldn’t include pneumonia or respiratory illness. Gill said the law in a sense handcuffs medical examiners, as they often have to rely on doctors and city clerks to report matters to them.
Then there are the COVID-19 deaths that even medical researchers didn’t know they would investigate.
Dr. Donald Linder, who is Linn County’s medical examiner, said that when people died with COVID-19, those cases were not reported to his office at first.
“Well, in the first few months of the pandemic, we learned first, second or third hand that that person had COVID,” said Linder. “Admit it, admit you should have told us.”
Linder said that and a lack of testing likely means that the number of deaths reported from COVID-19 is lower than the actual number of deaths in the state.
“There is no question that deaths were either underdeclared or slipped through the chasm,” said Linder.
Data from the Iowa Department of Public Health shows that the number of deaths has increased in 2020 and 2021.
The state has had problems reporting deaths from COVID-19 in the past. In November, I9 heard that Iowa’s data portal for COVID-19 was reporting among deaths in some counties around the state. At the time, Appanoose County Health Department reported 27 deaths in the county, but the state data portal reported only 9 deaths.
A similar difference occurred in Linn County. The Linn County Public Health Department reported 183 deaths on Wednesday. The state data portal reported 162 deaths.
The discrepancy arose because the state required a positive PCR test at the time and meant that those who died from the virus and did not have a positive PCR test would not be counted as a death. That changed in December and allows medical professionals to determine if a death is related to the virus.
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