No, there were not more than 11,000 deaths from Covid-19 hidden in nursing homes that would have appeared suddenly.
Some have instilled doubt when the counter in the data set of Public Health France exploded Tuesday night, from 26,500 to nearly 38,000. Such a change was, legitimately, something to intrigue.
It can actually be explained by a simple change in the counting method used by the health agency, as confirmed by the latter on Thursday.
The correction is underway and could appear as early as this evening.
We must begin by explaining how the deaths linked to Covid-19 of residents of medico-social establishments are counted (the vast majority of nursing homes, a term that we will use in the rest of this article for simplicity).
These can take place either in the hospital or within the establishment.
In the first case, they are counted with all the other patients - regardless of their age - who died in a hospital environment.
In the second case, they are counted separately.
Duplicate in total
As of August 30, the dataset showed 87,565 hospital deaths.
The number of deaths recorded in nursing homes had not been updated since mid-July, remaining stuck at 26,505. Public Health France was then unable to indicate what was the reason.
Finally, on August 31, the value 37,944 appeared in the column of deaths in nursing homes. There would therefore have been 11,000 residents who lost their lives in a month and a half, or… 250 per day. A figure apparently totally inconsistent, since it would be higher than the highest peak since the start of the pandemic (220 at the beginning of November 2020).
Contacted in the wake to understand where the problem came from, Public Health France responded to us the next day, that is to say Wednesday, September 1 in the evening. The number of deaths of deceased nursing home residents then rose to 37,959, including “26,680 in institutions and 11,279 in hospitals”, we were told. We thus understand, whereas this had never happened before, that the column “Ehpad deaths” now cumulates the deaths of residents in Ehpad AND those in the hospital. What Public Health France confirms to us definitively this Thursday.
What is happening with the death toll of nursing home residents, which jumped to over 11,000 last night in the dataset?
It seems that this is a change in the method of counting, which has disrupted everything.
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1/13 #thread # Covid19
- Nicolas Berrod (@nicolasberrod) September 1, 2021
The concern is that this 11,279 was not removed from the hospital death column (87,880 as of September 1).
Logically, the total number of deaths recorded in France since the start of the pandemic and which appeared in the data set was therefore 125,839. If we subtract 11,279 from this total, we fall on 114,560. That is a number very close to the one posted on the Public Health France site (and not in the data available in open data), namely 114,577. You should know that there have always been small differences between the totals depending on the source used. .and we therefore fall back on our feet.
Declining vaccine efficacy and booster doses
This whole story can therefore boil down to a change in definition for a column of data, which was not taken into account when calculating the total. Immediately intrigued - like us - Tuesday evening, Yann Reboulleau, director of the Philogeris group which has about twenty establishments, had contacted the ministerial cabinets for Health. "I made them understand that it was going to fall on them if they did not act quickly", indicates the person in charge.
Indeed, in the current context, it is never harmless to disseminate inconsistent figures.
As of Tuesday evening, several messages on social networks suggested that deaths could have been "hidden".
“That's an average of 204 additional deaths per day over this period.
Without heatwave.
They weakened the old ones in January and here is the result 7 months later.
Well done the strategy, ”writes one of the most active accounts.
Read also Why is it still complicated to know the real number of deaths from Covid-19?
Note however: even if we are therefore very far from reaching 11,000 deaths in a month and a half, the number of nursing home residents losing their lives on a daily basis in connection with the Covid has increased slightly in recent weeks. In its last epidemiological update of August 26, Public Health France had unveiled - for the first time in a long time - the numbers of positive cases and deaths. 87 residents lost their lives in 3 weeks (from August 2 to 22), or 4 per day. This is more than in June, when there was only one death per day - on average - in nursing homes.
This can be explained, in particular, by a decrease in the effectiveness of vaccines over time. Elderly people living in nursing homes have been vaccinated as a priority, and they will all be called upon (unless there is a medical contraindication) to receive a booster dose from September 13. The goal: to give a "boost" to their immunity.