Huron County didn't have jump in COVID deaths

NORWALK — No, Huron County has not had a sudden devastating rise in coronavirus deaths. Huron County Public Health, which issues a weekly COVID-19 update every Friday, reported 46 deaths in the update it issued on Jan. 29. On Feb. 5, the weekly update listed 84 deaths, an apparent increase of 38 over just one week. The weekly bulletin explained the apparent increase. "The number of fatalities listed in this week's report reflects a cumulative data update to include deaths from November 2020, December 2020, and January 2021," it said. Cyleen Sharpe, the spokeswoman for the county health department, provided an additional explanation on the department's efforts to catch up on its statistics. "COVID-19 deaths are rarely reported to us unless the individual was a resident in a long-term care facility or a family member reports the death to us. In either of these cases, we have to wait for the death certificate to be processed so we can see whether or not COVID is listed on the death certificate for it to be confirmed as a COVID death. The timeframe of this occurrence may vary based on a number of factors (i.e. death occurred out of county, etc.). Then we update this information in the Ohio Disease Reporting System (ODRS) and it reflects the following day on the Ohio Department of Health's Dashboard," she wrote in an email. "Unless deaths are reported to us, we're unfortunately not notified in any way, so we just have to look through death certificates as they are processed. If and when COVID is listed on a death certificate, we update that individual's information in ODRS to reflect their date and cause of death which again reflects the following day on the ODH Dashboard," she wrote. The department had fallen behind of staff time issues, the department said in an explanatory statement. "In more 'normal' circumstances we have added death information on a weekly basis. When we began experiencing a large case volume in November and December at around 400 cases per week, the majority of our staff had to be shifted to infection prevention and control in order to keep up with case interviews and isolating ill individuals. At that time we unfortunately did not have time to maintain some of the data elements that we do normally, including deaths (outside of when they were reported to us), as it can be a time-consuming process to gather this information. Since our case count has decreased, this has freed up staff time to allow them to return to regular updates of case information based on death certificates, including those from that time period." As in much of Ohio, infections in Huron County have been declining. The county reported 172 new cases the last week of January and 118 new cases last week.