Is it true ages and pre-existing medical conditions for U.S. residents who died from COVID-19 are not available? No, that's not true: the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website shows ages, additional medical conditions and other data for people who have died from COVID-19.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook on November 20, 2020. It opened:
New rule. Stop showing me Corona death numbers without showing me their age and if they had other conditions.
It should be public knowledge WHO is dying from this so we can make educated decisions moving forward.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Nov 23 16:51:01 2020 UTC)
The CDC provides to the public detailed data on U.S. residents who have died from COVID-19. Here's how to find it:
- The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics has a section called COVID-19 Death Data and Resources.
- In that section, there's a page titled Weekly Updates by Select Demographic and Geographic Characteristics. On that page, you can find data on:
- Age and sex
- Race and Hispanic origin
- Place of death
- Comorbidities
- Excess deaths
- State and county data files
"Comorbidities" refers to other medical conditions the person may have had. "Excess deaths" compares the actual number of deaths in a specific time period to the expected number in the same time period.
Each of the six categories shown above has at least one clickable tab that can be used to download additional data.
The link for Age and Sex has three additional tabs to download data:
- Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age, and State
- Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age, and Week
- Provisional COVID-19 Deaths: Focus on Ages 0-18 Years
The data link for Comorbidities is titled "Conditions contributing to deaths involving corona virus disease (COVID-19), by age group and state, United States. It was last updated November 18, 2020.
