Ohio Department of Health changing COVID-19 death reporting systems after underreporting incident

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Department of Health will move away from its system for reporting COVID-19 deaths toward a different system that Chief Medical Officer Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff called "the gold standard" in a call Tuesday with members of the media. The change comes after the February announcement that about 4,275 Ohio COVID-19 deaths were underreported on the old system, a misstep blamed on human error. The new system, according to Vanderhoff and Department of Health Director Stephanie McCloud, relies more on technology and less on manual entry. Under the old Ohio Disease Reporting System (ODRS), death reports were gathered from hospitals, urgent care facilities and local health districts, then published to the Ohio Department of Health website. "The ODRS has been crucial to the pandemic response in Ohio, but it can't be overemphasized that the program is outdated," McCloud said. The state health department will seek funding for the process of updating it in the next state budget. For the purpose of reporting COVID-19 deaths, the Ohio Department of Health will shift to the Electronic Death Registration System, which relies on death certificates that have been reviewed and coded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In fact, McCloud said several people will have looked at information on a COVID-19 death before it is reported publicly — "the treating physician, our Department of Vital Statistics and the CDC." Although this system will require more time to confirm a death was definitely from coronavirus, it is expected to be more accurate than the previous method. "The reconciliation that was going on for purposes of COVID, in an attempt to make real-time reporting, was manual and obviously fraught with opportunities for issues," McCloud said. The "probable deaths" statistic was removed from the Ohio Department of Health's website Tuesday because all deaths will be confirmed by death certificates going forward. As of Tuesday afternoon, after the website was updated, it displayed totals of 16,750 Ohio resident deaths from COVID-19, as well as 17,189 COVID-19 deaths in the state. Ohio residents who died from coronavirus, regardless of where they passed away geographically, are counted in the "Ohio resident deaths" statistic. Coronavirus patients who died within the Ohio borders, regardless of where they lived, are counted in the "Deaths in state of Ohio" statistic. Vanderhoff said the death data will be updated online as it is received by the state health department, but other data like cases and hospitalizations will continue daily. The state of Ohio as a whole reported 1,709 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, of which 1,047 were confirmed and 662 were probable. In Lorain County, there were 11 new confirmed cases and eight new probable cases reported Tuesday, according to Lorain County Public Health and state data. Contact Dylan Reynolds at (440) 329-7123 or dreynolds@chroniclet.com. Follow him on Twitter @drey1357.