LOUISVILLE, Ky. — New data from The Centers for Disease Control is getting a lot of attention on social media.
The claim that 'only 6%' of COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. were actually from COVID and COVID alone is true fails to give you the full picture.
The FOCUS team took a deeper look at the numbers and we are breaking down what that means.
The claim, out of the 183,000 COVID-19 deaths, only 9,000 were killed by the virus lacks context.
Most deaths from COVID-19 had more than one medical condition in addition to COVID-19, not instead of it.
Conditions contributing to COVID-19 deaths in Kentucky
This chart is showing the information provided by the CDC for Kentucky.
On the bottom, you can see all of the different conditions that people had when they died from the virus and then bars corresponding with how many people had each condition.
On the far right, you'll see all of these people were diagnosed with COVID-19. However, individuals with more than one condition are counted at least twice, for example, if a patient had diabetes and heart failure and COVID-19 they would be represented in all three bars in the chart.
This data also shows the risk different medical conditions add when a patient gets infected with COVID19. For example, in Kentucky, about 43% of the COVID-19 deaths were patients with influenza and pneumonia. Diabetes is also a big risk factor; about 18% of the COVID-19 deaths were those with diabetes. Hypertensive diseases, like high blood pressure, occurred in about 17% of Kentucky COVID-19 related deaths. If you or a family member have any of these conditions or illnesses you should be particularly cautious.
What this data doesn't tell us is the average number of conditions those that died from the virus had in Kentucky because individuals are counted per condition in this data, as we explained above, therefore appear in more than one bar on the graph.
The CDC reported, across the US, "on average, there were 2.6 additional conditions or causes per death."
When it comes to the state data, Governor Andy Beshear has said his office has a committee that is looking at death certificates that mention COVID-19 as the cause of death to double-check the difference between dying of the virus and dying with the virus.
They've said they will update data to reflect any discrepancies but we haven't seen those updates just yet.
Conditions contributing to COVID-19 deaths in Indiana
Here's a look at Indiana.
Again, if you or a loved one has any of the conditions listed in this graph, that increases the risk of death when combined with COVID-19. The higher the bar or the data in the bubble, the more risk.
In conclusion, this is something public health officials have said all along, people with underlying health issues are at higher risk of death to COVID-19.
Risk of death increases with age
Age is also a factor in predicting mortality from the virus; we have been showing this graph breaking down cases and deaths by age for months.
Here's a current breakdown for Kentucky.
For context, in Kentucky, about 75% of the COVID-19 deaths are those 70-years-old and up but that group only accounts for about 11% of the cases.
In contrast, those under 30 in Kentucky are less than 1% of the deaths but nearly, 34% of the cases.
Here's how it looks at the breakdown in the Hoosier state.
Again those 70-years-old and up are about 75% of the deaths in Indiana but only about 13% of the cases.
States and federal health officials, like the CDC, are collecting data independently. Data from multiple sources were used to make each graphs so the totals may conflict.
As a reminder, because of the time, it takes for data to be recorded, reported, and processed these numbers do not reflect what is currently happening in our community and could be delayed weeks or even months.
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