By Jerry Bellune
JerryBellune@yahoo.com
Official complaints of inaccurate covid death reports have raised questions about reporting here.
Minnesota officials found that 40% of thousands of death certificates should not have had covid as the underlying cause of death.
Minnesota Rep. Mary Franson and Sen. Scott Jensen believe the covid death count was inflated.
They said they found covid blamed for deaths from falls, a drowning, dementia, stroke and multi-organ failure.
Rep. Franson said a man ejected in a car accident was “counted as a covid death” because the virus was in his system.
The Chronicle asked the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control how it guards against such mistakes here. The newspaper wants the public to be informed, not misled..
DHEC spokesperson Laura Renwick answered DHEC is removed from the certifying process.
She said the SC Coroners Association or medical certifiers who determine causes and complete death certificates may provide details .
"Death certificates that are submitted to DHEC are sent to the CDC where nosologists code the certificate as one cause of death for the whole record and send that code back to us for record-keeping." she said.
"We then report the number of deaths with that CDC code. The regional CDC office may be able to provide further details. Please also see the CDC's Guidance for Certifying Deaths Due to Coronavirus Disease.
"Medical certifiers determine and approve the causes of deaths by certifying death certificates. DHEC's role is not one of approving or rejecting the causes of death. Just like birth certificates, DHEC's role is to be the record-keeper of the information provided."
Minnesota Rep. Franson said she and a team reviewed 2,800 “death certificate data points” and found that about 800 of them did not have the virus as the underlying cause of death.
"This is not just quibbling about whether the virus was the primary cause of death. But someone who drowned did not die of covid just because they had the virus.
"This is not the first time we’ve seen this. There have been other isolated reviews which have shown issues with deaths being attributed to the virus when the virus clearly wasn’t the cause. 
"We’ve even seen people who have tested negative prior to death still be written up as having died of the virus."