Scioto County EMA Director Larry Mullins announced another COVID death in the county. The victim was a 73-year-old man. The Scioto County and Portsmouth City Health Departments reported there have been 66 new positive COVID19 cases for Scioto County in the last 24 hours. The new cases bring the total to 2,210 for the county since the outbreak of the virus.
There are currently 755 active cases of COVID-19 in the County. The health departments also reported 37 more people who previously tested positive for the virus, have recovered, bringing the total of recoveries to 1,429 people over the course of the pandemic.
ODH also reported 4additional hospitalizations for the county on Sunday bringing the total to 179 people that have been hospitalized, during the outbreak, in connection with the virus or found to have the virus during their admission for other medical reasons. This number does not represent the number of people currently in the hospital in connection with COVID19.
Scioto County remains on Level 3 (Red). The county’s level is reevaluated weekly each Thursday.
Questions About Death Certificates
At the COVID Town Hall Meeting hosted by Scioto County Daily News, Scioto County Health Commissioner Dr. Michael Martin addressed concerns about the procedure for listing COVID-19 as a cause of death.
” When people get admitted to the hospital for a long time time, let’s say they got over the COVID but were still in the hospital and died of a complication in the hospital like a blood clot or something like that during the same hospitalization. Then we’d list COVID as the cause of death. If you have COVID and you recover. Then a few weeks later, you die that would not be listed as a cause of death. I’ve never heard of anyone out there running around on death certificates for any reason that’s not medically necessary. We’re required to put on the death certificates what we believe is the appropriate diagnosis. We list the appropriate cause of death. I think most doctors do that. They do the right thing when it comes to that. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy about throwing COVID on death certificates.”
Complications
Dr. Martin said there are many possible complications from the virus. “There’s a lot of things we’re learning about this disease.”
Among the possible complications:
- kidney failure
- blood clots
- heart attacks
- strokes
- pneumonia
- meningitis
- encephalitis
- liver failure
According to Dr. Martin, “If you died of that, we would say, ‘they died of liver failure but it was caused by COVID.'”