![]() The department stopped including deaths on its regular updates via Facebook when it became a source of friction with the public, Neblock said. If the test is not good enough for them to report it, why are they using it or allowing people to use it to test, then?” “If it is good enough to count it as a case, why isn’t it good enough to count it as a death? I struggle with the inconsistency in messaging from the state. “I don’t understand the state’s stand,” Neblock said. ![]() The state dashboard reported 21, fewer than her department was reporting in March. As of Thursday, Administrator Krista Neblock said, her reports showed 43 deaths. “It’s consistent and straightforward, which is what Missourians expect.”īut in Linn County, the inconsistency between the local report and the state data led the local health department to stop reporting its count of COVID-19 deaths. “For us, the answer is simple: we are reporting confirmed deaths because we believe this maintains the highest level of trust in the data,” Sami Jo Freeman, spokeswoman for the department, wrote in an email. Antigen-identified cases make up about 17% of the total 713,113 cases.īut the state does not report deaths from antigen test-identified cases. The state makes daily reports of both types of test. In the health department’s terminology, a PCR-identified infection is a “confirmed case,” while an antigen-identified infection is a “probable case.” Only tests that detect the genetic material of the virus, such as the PCR test using a long swab developed early in 2020, or the more recent home test called a LAMP test, is recognized.ĭeaths from cases identified with an antigen test, which detect virus proteins and can give results in minutes, are not reported by the state. ![]() The most important thing that determines whether a death appears on the state report is the type of test used to identify the COVID-19 infection. A review in late July found 1,081 more deaths on local pages than on the state report. When The Independent checked local health pages at that time, the difference between the state and local death report was 1,116 fatalities. That difference of about 1,100 between state and local fatality data has been evident since March. The 10,000 statewide total was likely surpassed sometime in May or early June, with the current total showing 11,182 deaths. Missouri officially passed the grim milestone of 10,000 COVID-19 deaths Thursday when the Department of Health and Senior Services added 20 new fatalities as part of its daily update of coronavirus data.īut that official report is 1,180 too low, according to an analysis of city and county health department data by The Independent. ![]()
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