Officials in Orange County, Florida, have confirmed that a motor accident death was initially included into the coronavirus death toll. It was later struck off the list, but not before the authorities were challenged by media.
Florida Department of Health in Orange County announced on Saturday that they no longer count the death of a twenty-something man in a motorcycle accident as a coronavirus fatality.
The case “was reviewed and he was taken off the list for COVID fatalities,” Kent Donahue, spokesman for Orange County Health Officer Dr. Raul Pino, told Fox35, which initially broke the story after perusing lists of official Covid-19 victims provided by the state.
In its report on Thursday, the Fox News subsidiary said that they stumbled upon several oddities when combing through the data, and decided to confront Pino about the deaths of two young individuals in their twenties that stood out from the rest.
Perhaps, getting more than they bargained for, journalists got a straight up admission from Pino that the death was included into the coronavirus toll in an apparent blunder.
“The first one didn’t have any...the first one, he died in a motorcycle accident,” he said. When asked whether the county removed the man’s death off the list of Covid-19 fatalities, Pino raised even more eyebrows, saying that they “were arguing..with the state” about the issue.
“We were arguing, discussing, or trying to argue with the state. Not because of the numbers. It’s 100…it doesn’t make any difference if it's 99. But the fact that the individual didn’t die from COVID19…died in a crash. “
Man dies in motorcycle accident - classified as COVID death.
Dr. Raul Pino COVID Health Officer when asked how this could be: "Maybe the COVID19 caused him to crash"
The official then appeared to backtrack on his initial comment, saying that one can theoretically argue that the fact that the man was Covid-19 positive could have led to the crash.
But you could actually argue that it could have been the COVID-19 that caused him to crash. I don’t know the conclusion of that one
Orange County, meanwhile, set a new record in coronavirus deaths in a single day with as many as 14 fatalities having been reported on Saturday. Its previous record was nine lethal cases within 24 hours. Nearby Marion County also broke its own record for a single-day Covid-19 death toll, reporting 8 fatalities.
Overall, Florida reported 10,327 positive coronavirus cases on Saturday, bringing the total number of infections in the state to 337,568, including 4,895 who died from the virus.
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