6 more coronavirus deaths reported in Westmoreland County

State health officials on Monday reported six more people in Westmoreland County died from the coronavirus.

The Department of Health, in its daily update, reported a total of 38 deaths in the county. The county coroner’s office has been reporting 32 virus-related deaths since May 7.

There are also five new cases of covid-19 in the county, according to the Department of Health, bringing the county’s running total to 432 since April 5.

Westmoreland County Coroner Ken Bacha said the number of deaths linked to covid-19 reported by the state versus his office “will likely never match” because the state is recording deaths based on where patients reside instead of the county where the death occurs.

“If a patient lives in Westmoreland County but dies at a hospital in Allegheny County, that person is calculated as a Westmoreland death. For example, a few weeks ago, a person in Indiana County who lived in a nursing home in Westmoreland passed away from covid-19 and that death was listed as an Indiana County coronavirus death,” Bacha said.

Indeed, Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine said during her daily briefing that her department overhauled the way it collects and reports death data, switching from one reporting system to another.

The department previously used the Pennsylvania National Electronic Disease Surveillance System, which is the system generally used to track outbreaks of infectious diseases. It relied on taking information provided by hospital and health care providers on deaths and matching it up with a list of those who have tested positive for the virus.

Death data will now be collected and reported via the state’s Electronic Death Registration System (EDRS). Levine said that system allows the information to fall more in line with CDC reporting guidelines, mainly that deaths be attributed to the county in which the person legally resided.

A person’s home county, she said, is not always the same as the county in which they died, especially when it comes to patients in long-term care facilities.

Bacha noted that the method of fatal coronavirus calculations by the state health department has been an issue with coroners across the state since March. In other instances, such as opioid and traffic deaths, deaths are recorded based on where the person dies, Bacha said.

“But the state health department claims they are following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regulations in this instance. So our numbers will likely never be the same,” Bacha said.

The state’s death toll reached 4,505 on Monday, with a running case count of 63,056 since March 6. That’s an increase of 87 deaths and 822 cases reported between 12 a.m. Sunday and 12 a.m. Monday.

The department continued to report that 27 of the Westmoreland County’s deaths occurred in long-term care homes. In total, there have been 138 cases of covid-19 across nine facilities in the county.