Updated at 4:05 p.m.
The Vermont Department of Health on Friday revealed that 86 more Vermonters than previously known have died from Covid-19. A revised count raises the state’s pandemic death toll from 791 to 877.
The deaths, which were discovered during an analysis in late December, date back to April 2020, but most — 73 out of 86 — occurred in 2022, according to a press release issued by the department.
Throughout the pandemic, real-time reports of the state’s Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and fatalities were key to the public’s understanding of the virus and to the state’s emergency response efforts.
Health Commissioner Mark Levine said in the press release that he regrets that the data was not reported “in a more timely manner.” In an interview Friday afternoon, he told VTDigger, “We feel very positively about the fact that we can be transparent about this and hopefully not suffer any erosion in confidence by Vermonters.
The 86 deaths raise the state’s Covid death toll by about 11% and the 2022 death toll by about 23%, according to a VTDigger analysis of department data. Before the newly released data, 2021 was the deadliest year of the pandemic, with 339 deaths. The revised data makes clear that 2022 was the deadliest year, with 384 deaths.
Levine said the deaths were “pretty well-distributed” throughout 2022. He does not expect the new data to shift the demographic breakdown because the missing reports were “random.”
“The reality is that at any point in time, either over the three years or over the last year, having this additional data would not have really influenced our view of the entire pandemic as it was being managed at the time,” Levine said, nor would it have impacted any policy decisions.
As to why 2022 turned out to be so deadly, Levine said the Omicron variant’s greater transmissibility spread the virus to more and more of the population, increasing the number of people who were susceptible to severe disease and death.
Vermont still has the second-lowest death toll of any state, behind only Hawaii, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The deaths initially were not reported because of an issue with the state’s surveillance system, according to the health department. Levine said that when a death from Covid occurs, the state medical examiner notifies department staff, who then manually update the state database.
A health department analyst noticed late last year that several reports had not been entered, prompting the department to go back and check for more missing data, Levine said.
The department plans to update the state’s Covid data portal with the new fatality data in its routine data update next Wednesday and to include it in future weekly surveillance reports, according to the press release.
Levine said another reason so many deaths were missed in 2022 was that fewer staff members at the department were working on Covid data compared to the early years of the pandemic.
“You not only had a shrinking of the team, but then we had more turnover of the team, which would allow for the potential, at least, for more human error,” he said.
Levine said the mistake speaks to the need to shore up public health infrastructure at a statewide and national level.
“These are vulnerable areas — not vulnerable just during the pandemic, but vulnerable for many decades, due to an erosion, if you will, of that infrastructure of public health,” he said.
The department received federal grants in the latter half of 2022 for its epidemiology team, which it is using to hire new staff members and move toward automated data reporting, Levine said. It has moved Covid fatality reporting to an automated vital records system, which follows the recommendations of the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists.
He said people who have lost loved ones to the pandemic should not feel “overlooked” because fatalities have always been “front and center” in how the department has approached the pandemic.
“Every death has had an impact on us,” he said. “Having several more deaths per month than we were seeing would have had the same impact. And every death has been a valuable learning lesson as far as I'm concerned.”
Get the latest statistics and live updates on our coronavirus page.
Sign up for our coronavirus email list.
Tell us your story or give feedback at coronavirus@vtdigger.org.
Support our nonprofit journalism with a donation.
