The Scioto County EMA reported another COVID related death. That brings the total number of deaths to 81.
The most recent was a 93-year-old man who died on January 28.
The Health Departments reported 28 new cases on Friday.
The new cases bring the total to 5,524 since the start of the outbreak. There are currently 593 active cases in the county.
There were 49 additional recoveries reported by ODH for the county, bringing the number of recoveries to 4,850 over the course of the pandemic
Scioto County remains at Level Three or “Red” on the Ohio Department of Health’s Public Health Advisory System (PHAS). The county met the same 1 out of 7 indicators that it met last week.
Mullins pointed out that while a deceased may have tested positive for COVID-19, that doesn’t mean that other medical conditions did not play a part in the death. Scioto County Health Commissioner, Dr. Michael Martin, explained how that works at SCDN’s COVID Town Hall.
Questions About Death Certificates
At SCDN’s 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.'”
