Donald Trump insists US coronavirus death toll is accurate despite warnings from experts and state officials who say true number is much higher because of limited testing and inconsistencies in reporting
- Trump and two top members of his coronavirus task force stamped out uncertainty about the official death toll during Tuesday's White House briefing
- 'I think they are pretty accurate on the death counts,' Trump said
- Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Deborah Birx backed up his claim
- However, experts have said that the true number of coronavirus fatalities is likely much higher than the official count because of a lack of post-mortem testing
- They also raised concerns that there isn't a uniform system for recording deaths
President Donald Trump has insisted that the current coronavirus death toll in the US is accurate - despite warnings from experts and state officials who say the true number of fatalities could be significantly higher.
Trump stamped out uncertainty about the official death count during Tuesday's White House briefing after a reporter brought up how some areas are struggling to get accurate numbers because of a lack of testing and a uniform system to record the figures.
'I think they are pretty accurate on the death counts,' Trump said, interrupting the reporter before she could finish her question.
'Somebody dies, I think they've been pretty accurate. The death counts, I think they are very, very accurate.'
President Donald Trump insisted that the current coronavirus death toll in the US is accurate during Tuesday's White House briefing
As of Tuesday evening at least 12,876 people in the US have died from coronavirus. Experts and state officials have warned that the true number of fatalities could be significantly higher
He went on to cast doubt on case counts reported by other countries such as China while insisting that the same problems aren't occurring in the US.
'You look at some of these certain countries and I'll be willing to bet they had more cases, but we are more accurate in our testing,' he said.
'We've got a good process.'
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Dr Deborah Birx, the White House's coronavirus response coordinator, also stood by the accuracy of the death count when asked about it later in the briefing.
'I think in this country we've taken a very liberal approach to mortality, and I think the reporting here has been pretty straightforward over the last five to six weeks,' Birx said.
'Prior to that, when there wasn't testing in January and February, that's a very different situation and unknown.
'There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and, let's say, the virus caused you to go to the ICU, and then have a heart issue or kidney problem, some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death.
'Right now we're still recording it. If someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death.'
Dr Deborah Birx, the the White House's coronavirus response coordinator, also stood by the accuracy of the death count when asked about it later in Tuesday's briefing
The reporter then pressed Birx by mentioning how some coroners have said that they do not have enough test kits screen people for COVID-19 post-mortem, which could skew the data.
'I think that would apply to more rural areas that may not have the same level of testing,' Birx said.
'I'm pretty confident in New York City and New Jersey and places that have these large outbreaks, and Covid-19 only hospitals, I can tell you they are testing.
'New York and New Jersey together ... are testing extraordinarily well, as well as Washington state and Louisianat, so I don't see that there has been a barrier in testing to diagnosis.
Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, then took the podium to reiterate Birx's statements.
'I can't imagine if someone with coronavirus goes to an ICU and they have an underlying heart condition and they die, they're going to say cause of death: heart attack,' Fauci said.
'I can't see that happening, so I don't like it will be a problem.'
Birx and Fauci's claims that hard-hit areas like New York City are not seeing problems with curating accurate death tolls came hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted just that.
In his own briefing on Tuesday, de Blasio said that people who died in their homes in the past few weeks without having being tested or treated for COVID-19 likely had the disease.
Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted on Tuesday that many people have likely died from coronavirus in New York City without being added to the official death toll
'I am assuming the vast majority of those deaths are coronavirus related,' the mayor said of people who've died at home recently.
'It's understandable in a crisis that being able to make the confirmation is harder to do with all the resources stretched so thin.
'The first use of all of everything we've got – our professionals, our health care workers, our resources – the first thing we are focused on is saving the next life.
'We do want to know the truth about what happened in every death at home.
'But I think we can say at this point, it's right to assume the vast majority are coronavirus-related. And that makes it even more sober, the sense of how many people we are losing, how many families are suffering, how real this crisis is.'
Issues with confirming an accurate death toll were made apparent on Tuesday as the number released by New York City - 3,544 - was well below the number of fatalities that New York state claimed had occurred in the Big Apple - more than 4,000.
Even the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has admitted that the current national death toll is almost certainly lower than the actual number.
'We know that it is an underestimation,' CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said of the toll on Sunday.
The purported inaccuracy is partly due to an early lag in available testing, which meant people with respiratory illnesses died without being counted.
Even now, some Americans who die in their homes or at overwhelmed nursing homes are not being tested, epidemiologists tell The Washington Post.
Postmortem testing by medical examiners can be tricky, as procedures vary widely across the United States and some officials argue testing the deceased is a misuse of valuable resources.
The process can also be difficult as examiners, coroners and health care providers are told to 'use their judgement' to decide when testing is appropriate.
Additionally, experts said some people who have contracted coronavirus test negative. It's unclear how common false negatives are.
Even the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has admitted that the current national death toll is almost certainly lower than the actual number. Pictured: Medical workers wheel the bodies of COVID-19 victims to a temporary morgue outside Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn
The CDC's official count, which is created from reports submitted by state and tops at 12,000 as of Tuesday, is noticeably lower than those revealed by media organizations and university researchers. This is in part due to in lapse in official reporting.
The lag also happened because the code for recording COVID-19 as an official cause of death was not announced until March 24.
It's too early to estimate how many coronavirus-related deaths have evaded official count, according to scientists who analyze mortality statistics from influenza and respiratory illnesses.
For a disease with common symptoms like coronavirus, scientists said that deaths with positive results most likely represent just a fraction of total deaths by the disease.
Marc-Alain Widdowson, a former epidemiologist at the CDC and current director of the Institute of Tropical Medicine Antwerp in Belgium, doubled down on these claims.
'You can't rely on just the laboratory-confirmed cases,' he said.
'You're never going to apply the test on everybody who is ill and everybody who dies. So without doubt — it's a truism — the number of deaths are underestimated globally because you don't apply the test.'
Clay Marsh, known as West Virginia's 'coronavirus czar', has admitted that the state's official count is in all likelihood incomplete.
'Based on the best recent information about limited testing and sizable false negative rates of testing, we are likely underestimating the number of deaths,' said Marsh, vice president and executive dean for health sciences at West Virginia University.
West Virginia's count is also low because of the state's rural, small population and the early closure of schools and nonessential businesses.
