Their findings are being chronicled in a series of USA Today articles

According to a report by Dutch news outlet BNO News on August 18, more than 1,100 COVID-19 deaths were reported in the United States last week. According to BNO News' COVID data tracker, so far this year, more than 4.6 million COVID-19 cases have been reported in the United States, resulting in at least 332,398 hospitalizations (limited data) and 36,226 deaths.

With the US pandemic death toll climbing toward one million, a Boston University public health researcher is partnering with a team of investigative journalists to shine light on a hidden aspect of COVID-19 mortality: deaths excluded from the official totals.

While the formal tallies include anyone who had COVID listed on their death certificate, they don’t catch everyone whose life was shortened by the pandemic: the older person who died alone at home, undiagnosed; the person who took their life because of new financial stresses. Some estimates suggest the unofficial death count may be 20 percent higher than the publicly touted one. Andrew Stokes, a demographer who has studied death rates since the pandemic’s outset, is working with reporters from the open-records project Documenting COVID-19 to increase public scrutiny of the potential undercounts. Their findings are being chronicled in a series of USA Today articles.