Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Data Gaps for Coronavirus Disease Deaths, Tennessee, USA

• Main Authors: John James Parker, Rany Octaria, Miranda D. Smith, Samantha J. Chao, Mary Beth Davis, Celia Goodson, Jon Warkentin, Denise Werner, Mary-Margaret A. Fill
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2021-10-01
• Series: Emerging Infectious Diseases
• Subjects: coronavirus disease; COVID-19; severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; SARS-CoV-2; coronaviruses; viruses
• Online Access: https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1070_article

As of March 2021, coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had led to >500,000 deaths in the United States, and the state of Tennessee had the fifth highest number of cases per capita. We reviewed the Tennessee Department of Health COVID-19 surveillance and chart-abstraction data during March 15‒August 15, 2020. Patients who died from COVID-19 were more likely to be older, male, and Black and to have underlying conditions (hereafter comorbidities) than case-patients who survived. We found 30.4% of surviving case-patients and 20.3% of deceased patients had no comorbidity information recorded. Chart-abstraction captured a higher proportion of deceased case-patients with >1 comorbidity (96.3%) compared with standard surveillance deaths (79.0%). Chart-abstraction detected higher rates of each comorbidity except for diabetes, which had similar rates among standard surveillance and chart-abstraction. Investing in public health data collection infrastructure will be beneficial for the COVID-19 pandemic and future disease outbreaks.