It is not surprising that different organizations tracking the number of Covid-19-related deaths have different numbers at different times. But the count on Worldometers had the U.S. surpassing 1 million Covid-19 deaths back on March 17 of this year.
Yet this morning, the White House issued a statement from the president declaring that,“Today, we mark a tragic milestone: one million American lives lost to COVID-19.”
The U.S. death count on Worldometers is now up to 1,025,764, as of this morning. Worldometers states, “our sources include official websites of ministries of health or other government institutions, and government authorities’ social media accounts. Because national aggregates often lag behind the regional and local health departments’ data, part of our work consists in monitoring thousands of daily reports released by local authorities.”
Getting death certificate data from local health departments, hospitals, and coroners to the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics takes time; the NHCS website warns that, “It can take several weeks for death records to be submitted to NCHS, processed, coded, and tabulated. Therefore, the data shown on this page may be incomplete, and will likely not include all deaths that occurred during a given time period, especially for the more recent time periods.” NCHS estimates that data currently are lagged by an average of one to two weeks.
Still, the gap between the Worldometers count and the U.S. government statistics is now closer to two months than two weeks. As of May 7, the NCHS calculated the U.S. death toll at 998,716 Americans, adding, “in at least 90 percent of these deaths, Covid-19 was listed as the underlying cause of death; for the remaining deaths, Covid-19 was listed as a contributing cause of death.”
Perhaps this difference doesn’t matter that much; the death toll is horrific and heart-breaking whatever the particular number, and eventually, the official U.S. death toll count will catch up to other counts. But it does seem a little odd that the government is marking a milestone that the country likely passed around Saint Patrick’s Day. And the country is indeed formally marking the milestone: President Biden ordered the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and “on all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset May 16, 2022.”