Two more Clark County men have died from COVID-19, pushing the county’s death toll to 51, according to Clark County Public Health, which reported 76 new COVID-19 cases on Monday.
The latest fatalities were a man in his 70s with underlying health conditions and a man in his 60s. It is not known if the man in his 60s had underlying health conditions.
The new cases push the county’s total number of cases to 2,610. The 76 new cases reported Monday represent cases from Saturday, Sunday and Monday.
The weekend total was up from Aug. 24, when 50 cases were reported over the three-day period. There were 80 cases reported on Aug. 17 for the comparable period, 92 on Aug. 10, and 107 on Aug. 3 for the same periods, according to previous Public Health reports.
There are 19 people hospitalized in Clark County with COVID-19 and five people hospitalized awaiting test results, according to Public Health.
In addition to the new numbers, Clark County Public Health issued a statement over social media on Monday to clarify information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about deaths from COVID-19.
“We’re seeing a lot of misunderstanding around new data from the CDC, and we need to set the record straight,” the statement said.
According to Public Health, provisional death data from the CDC showed that COVID-19 was the only cause mentioned in 6 percent of COVID-19 deaths, while underlying conditions were noted in in the remaining 94 percent of deaths attributed to COVID-19.
“This does not mean that only 6 percent of deaths are due to COVID-19,” the statement said. “It means that for the other 94 percent, there were underlying conditions that likely made their COVID-19 illness worse and made them more at risk for serious illness and death.”
Those ratios are from national records on cases. In Clark County, 74.5 percent (38 cases) of those who died had underlying conditions, while 5.9 percent (three cases) had no underlying conditions. In 19.6 percent (10) of the cases, health officials have not been able to determine if they had underlying conditions, according to Public Health spokeswoman Marissa Armstrong.
The Public Health statement noted that there are different types of cause of death — immediate, underlying and contributing — and all of those can come into play with COVID-19.
An example of an immediate cause of death would be acute respiratory distress syndrome — which means that it is what directly killed them, according to the statement.
An underlying cause of death would be a death hastened by COVID-19 or pneumonia from COVID-19. The disease triggers a cascade of factors that eventually lead to death, the statement said.
Contributing factors could be asthma, COPD, or diabetes, which is a condition that may have made their illness worse than it would have been otherwise, according to the statement.
“Older adults are more likely to have more contributing factors, but if they don’t get COVID-19, then they don’t start this cascade of events that lead to death,” the statement said.
