It’s So Hard to Know Who’s Dying of COVID-19— And When
Each and every day for the past few months, the world is facing the highest death rate altogether. In accordance with the most recent tallies as of now, almost 470,822 have died and 9,051,949 are known to be infected by the dreaded COVID-19 virus worldwide. The recorded death toll in the United States on a date is almost around 122,248 and almost 2,356,715 people are infected.
Though these data look quite precise and to the point but virologists and epidemiologists are quite fond of saying that all these models might be wrong but many of them are useful. The same is very much true for the mortality stats. Most of the Public health officials have fought a tough and long battle with the delayed reporting and inconsistency of death numbers even with the many different places of the same country. This resulting in a long-standing issue among the researchers, which poses a problem for them to track down the Coronavirus pandemic and understand all its implications.
According to Mark Hayward, a sociologist at the University of Texas and an advisor to the United States Centers For Disease Control and Prevention said that every country’s registration system is different from one another and there isn’t any country in the world whose vital registration system is just perfect.
Reason For The Delay In Knowing The Actual Death Toll Worldwide
The main problems start with getting to know the exact cause of death and then attributing it to the Coronavirus. Many European countries such as Netherlands count only those people who have died in the hospitals after getting positive from the COVID-19 virus. Other countries such as Belgium, France includes even those who have died in the community after showing mild symptoms of the infection. In most cases, those who died don’t undergo a regular diagnostic PCR test.
In order to get included in the national count of the country, every death needs to be recorded locally, and then the same needs to be done more efficiently in the centralized accounting system. Most of the countries do this in their own way. During the initial days of the pandemic, the UK government only presented those death numbers, that were presented electronically in the NHS or the National Health Service hospital network. By the mid of April 2020, those figures were extended in order to include a different set of figures that were collected by the National Statistics of Community Death, mainly in the care houses. Apart from these, there are even some national systems, where there is a big delay in getting the actual reports because those were still sent by post or by fax.
While all the countries across the world are facing the coronavirus pandemic with courage, the nurses, doctors, and the medical facility remains to be in the front line of defense. Recent data suggest that there is a big shortage of medical authorities and trained nurses in the United States. In order to fill that shortage, the Centers For Disease Control and Prevention, along with some other American government institutions came up with some great plans and ideas. These plans include several notifications for the Higher education institutes and the nursing schools of the US to fight bravely against this pandemic. Erudite online nursing school came up with an idea to provide online courses including some accelerated nursing programs to further help the nurses fight against the dreaded Coronavirus disease.
Sources-
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/controlprevention.html#health
Note: The foregoing article and information contained therein may be copyrighted and may not be reproduced in part or entirety without advance written permission. For permissions or editorial corrections, contact: Ms. Kelsey Hanna, khanna@EruditeNursing.education. All information is provided for informational purposes and deemed to be correct at the time of publication, but may change with or without notice; no guarantees are made as to accuracy and all liability is hereby released as to the same.
