Reuters: Fact check: 94% of individuals with additional causes of death still had COVID-19

After a false claim was shared thousands of times on Facebook, the Reuters Fact Check team spoke to health experts to set the record straight.

The posts claim the CDC "quietly updated" its COVID-19 data to say only 6% of all coronavirus U.S. deaths recorded actually died from COVID-19.

This claim is false because the remaining 94% of cases were instances of comorbidity (the existence of two or more conditions or illnesses in a patient). This does not exclude COVID-19 but combines it with other illnesses, often triggered by the new coronavirus itself.

Dr. Marc Larsen, an emergency medicine physician and Incident Command Operations Chair for COVID-19 at Saint Luke's Health System, explains how physicians typically use a standard format listing all contributing factors when filling out death certificates.

Read the full Reuters article: Fact check: 94% of individuals with additional causes of death still had COVID-19

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