Less Than 6% of COVID-19 Fatalities Reported No Comobities

The U.S. CDC reported on April 7, 2021, among 378,048 death certificates from 2020 listing COVID-19. Among 357,133 death certificates with at least one other medical condition listed, 97% had a co-occurring diagnosis of a plausible chain-of-event condition (e.g., pneumonia or respiratory failure) or a significant contributing condition (e.g., hypertension or diabetes), or both.

Only 5.5% of death certificates identified COVID-19 without other medical conditions listed.

This finding was more frequent for death certificates indicating that the death occurred not in a hospital but in the decedent’s home (38.3%), a nursing home or long-term care facility (38.5%), or a hospice facility (23.2%). 

The CDC says this finding was noted for adults aged 18–84 years, both genders, all races and ethnicities, those who died in inpatient and outpatient or emergency department settings, and those whose manner of death was listed as natural.

This study's corresponding author was Adi V. Gundlapalli, agundlapalli@cdc.gov.