To give you an idea of the lag between when a Covid death occurs and when it is reported, let's look at today's report from the state of Florida, which reported 153 resident deaths on 9/16.
The picture shows "newly identified" deaths (today's) in darker purple:
So, of the 153 resident deaths Florida reported today:
27 of them occurred in the last week (17.7%)
26 of them 1-2 weeks ago (17.0%)
30 of them 2-3 weeks ago (19.6%)
20 of them 3-4 weeks ago (13.1%)
Which leaves 50 deaths that occurred more than 4 weeks ago (32.7%).
On top of normal reporting lag, backlog clearing (death certificate matching) and reclassifying what counts as a death enter the mix as well.
An example of the former is Virginia's reported deaths today (45) and yesterday (96). The VDH website provided the following disclaimer:
Arkansas provides a reclassification example today, in which it updated how it qualifies a "probable" death. This added 139 (probable) deaths to today's number, which @COVID19Tracking will report.
These changes usually account for deaths much earlier than even the standard lag.
As someone who posts daily updates, it's hard for me to account for this, and I've removed large data dumps in the past while keeping others in when it represented recent data (say, 1- or 2-week backlog).
Current trends are much more valuable if they are indeed "current" trends.
So when assessing how your county, or state, or region, or the US as a whole is doing "right now," consider the above.
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