WATCH: CNN’s medical adviser admits US overcounted COVID deaths
Luke Gentile
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CNN’s medical analyst reiterated her admission Tuesday and acknowledged the United States has overcounted its COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations.
“This is why this kind of transparent reporting is going to be so important,” Dr. Leana Wen said to the hosts of CNN This Morning. “There is a way for us to look at death certificates and also to look at the medical records of individuals prior to their death.”
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“I think this needs to be separated into three categories,” she continued. “One is COVID as the direct contributor, the primary cause of death. The second is could it be a secondary contributing cause. So, for example, somebody with kidney disease, COVID then pushes them over the edge to have kidney failure. That’s COVID as a contributing cause. The third is COVID as an incidental finding.”
The last group could include individuals with a gunshot wound or heart attack and happen to test positive, Wen said.
The medical analyst first admitted that COVID deaths and hospitalizations were being overcounted in a Friday Washington Post column titled, “We are overcounting COVID deaths and hospitalizations. That’s a problem.”
“Understanding this distinction is crucial to putting the continuing toll of the coronavirus into perspective. Determining how likely it is an infection will result in hospitalization or death helps people weigh their own risk,” she wrote.
“Robin Dretler, an attending physician at Emory Decatur Hospital and the former president of Georgia’s chapter of Infectious Diseases Society of America, estimates that at his hospital, 90 percent of patients diagnosed with COVID are actually in the hospital for some other illness.”
Speaking to the CNN This Morning crew, Wen explained how the three groups she described need to be separated out and analyzed by percentage.
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“That percentage would have shifted over time as well,” she said. “At the beginning, probably a lot more people were dying with the primary cause of COVID. That probably has shifted, and I think, again, we need to understand this.”
“A lot of people are wondering when they should get a booster next. When do we need a second booster, or another booster, and the only way we can know for sure is to understand who is getting severely ill and when.”