Whatcom’s had 150 COVID-related deaths, but how does that compare to other causes of death?
Whatcom County reached a dubious milestone of 150 COVID-related deaths with Wednesday’s data release by the Washington State Department of Health.
Approximately 1.0% of Whatcom’s 15,441 total COVID cases during the pandemic have resulted in death, according to the state’s data, which is better than the 1.2% of cases ending in death statewide.
But just how deadly has COVID been in Whatcom County?
Though the Washington State Department of Health’s death dashboard has not yet released statistics for 2020 and will not release partial data for 2021, The Bellingham Herald’s analysis of prorated data from 2019 shows COVID would have represented the fourth-deadliest cause of death within Whatcom County, with more than one in 20 deaths being related to the disease.
Heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s would have been the only deadlier causes than COVID, The Herald’s analysis showed, though chronic lower respiratory disease (such as chronic bronchitis, emphysema and asthma) would have been a close fifth.
There were 1,850 deaths in Whatcom County in 2019, according to the state’s death dashboard.
Of those, 406 were classified as being from heart disease (21.9%), 402 were from cancer (21.7%), 140 were from Alzheimer’s (7.6%) and 95 from chronic lower respiratory disease (5.1%).
Whatcom County’s first COVID-related death was of a person who first tested positive on March 13, 2020, according to the state’s epidemiological data. Its most recent COVID-related death was linked to Oct. 2.
Using the 568 days between Whatcom’s first and 150th COVID-related deaths to prorate the state’s 2019 data, there would have been 2,879 total deaths in the county.
The 150 COVID-related deaths would represent 5.2% of that prorated total, The Herald’s analysis shows, and the five most common causes based on 568 days would be:
▪ Heart disease with a prorated total of 632 deaths.
▪ Cancer with a prorated total of 626 deaths.
▪ Alzheimer’s with a prorated total of 218 deaths.
▪ COVID-19 with 150 deaths.
▪ Chronic lower respiratory disease with a prorated total of 148 deaths.
For the record, the rest of the top 10 causes based on 2019’s data would be: stroke with a prorated total of 123 deaths (based on 79 deaths in 2019), accidents with a prorated total of 118 deaths (based on 76 deaths in 2019), diabetes with a prorated total of 104 deaths (based on 67 deaths in 2019), suicide with a prorated total of 79 deaths (based on 51 deaths in 2019) and chronic liver disease and flu/pneumonia with prorated totals of 47 deaths each (based on 30 deaths in 2019).
Using the same analysis method, The Herald also found that Whatcom’s prorated 5.2% of deaths being linked to COVID would be lower than the entire state’s 8.5%, based on 8,152 COVID-related deaths reported Wednesday, 58,297 deaths in the state in 2019 and 587 days between the epidemiological dates of the first and most recent COVID-related deaths.
