Ohio failed to report up to 4,000 deaths from COVID-19

More than 4,000 people will be added to Ohio’s coronavirus death toll after officials found that more than a third of all deaths had not been reported to the public.

A statement from Ohio’s health department said the reconciliation and reporting of deaths from COVID-19 had been affected by “process issues.” The issue was discovered during routine employee training.

The problems date back to October but most of the missing deaths are from November and December, the department said. They will be added to Ohio’s death toll during a two to three-day period over the coming week.

The revision will cause a significant increase for the state’s COVID-19 death toll, raising it from 11,856 to approximately 15,900. This means that more than a third of all deaths had not been reported to the public.

The revision raises the U.S. coronavirus death toll to 475,000.