Texas Improves COVID-19 Fatality Reporting

On July 27, 2020, the Texas Department of State Health Services announced it will now be reporting fatalities due to COVID-19 disease by identifying them through the cause of death listed on death certificates. A fatality is counted as due to COVID-19 when the medical certifier, usually a doctor with direct knowledge of the patient, determines COVID-19 disease directly caused the death.

This new method does not include .... deaths of people who had COVID-19 ... but died of an unrelated cause.

Based on this new counting methodology, the state of Texas had reported a total of 6,274 fatalities related to COVID-19 during 2020. This data indicates a fatality rate of .0002%, based on Texas's 29.9 million residents, as of July 30, 2020.