{"id":91100,"date":"2020-05-20T00:15:26","date_gmt":"2020-05-20T00:15:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/la-plata-county-man-died-of-heart-complications-not-covid-19-coroner-rules\/"},"modified":"2020-05-20T00:15:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-20T00:15:26","slug":"la-plata-county-man-died-of-heart-complications-not-covid-19-coroner-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/la-plata-county-man-died-of-heart-complications-not-covid-19-coroner-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"La Plata County man died of heart complications, not COVID-19, coroner rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/p>

An 80-year-old man reported to be La Plata County\u2019s only confirmed COVID-19 fatality died of congestive heart failure, not the novel coronavirus, according to La Plata County Coroner Jann Smith.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t right this man\u2019s death should be attributed to COVID-19 when it didn\u2019t have anything to do with it,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n

It is one of hundreds of cases across the state in which someone who died with the virus was counted among COVID-19 deaths, even though the virus may not have been the leading cause of the death.<\/p>\n

A similar situation occurred earlier this month in Montezuma County, where a man with a blood-alcohol content of 0.55, or almost seven times the legal driving limit of 0.08 in Colorado, died of alcohol poisoning. But because the man also had COVID-19, public health officials counted him among the coronavirus deaths.<\/p>\n

Public health officials have since changed their reporting practices to distinguish between those who died from COVID-19 and those who died for other reasons, but tested positive for the virus at the time of their death.<\/p>\n

Smith said several factors led to the confused reporting of the La Plata County man.<\/p>\n

For starters, when the man died May 9, it was reported to the Coroner\u2019s Office as a positive case of coronavirus. Smith then called San Juan Basin Public Health to inform the agency of the case. SJBPH announced the death that day.<\/p>\n

But upon more investigation, Smith learned other health factors went into the man\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

\"Smith\"
Smith<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m not saying San Juan Basin jumped the gun,\u201d she said. \u201cBut maybe I shouldn\u2019t have called as soon as I did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Upon speaking with family, Smith learned the man had tested positive for COVID-19 while in Denver for other medical treatment. But when he returned to Durango and was retested, the test came back inconclusive.<\/p>\n

Health officials are quick to point out inconclusive tests are different from negative test results. For a test to come back inconclusive, there was likely an issue in specimen collection or lab processing.<\/p>\n

The man hadn\u2019t shown strong symptoms of COVID-19 since he returned to Durango, Smith said. But his health was steadily going downhill, she said, with a long list of health issues.<\/p>\n

When he died May 9, there was no federal or state guidance for drawing a distinction between people who died with the coronavirus versus people who died from the virus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did everything right according to the guidance at the time,\u201d said Liane Jollon, executive director for SJBPH. \u201cWe never changed a death certificate or tried to mislead the public.\u201d<\/p>\n

Beginning Friday, the state began separating the two in its public reports. As of Monday, the state was reporting 1,224 total deaths, but only 921 directly related to COVID-19.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was uncomfortable with the way it was being recorded,\u201d Smith said. \u201dBut I like the way they (have since) separated the categories. I think that\u2019s fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Jollon\"
Jollon<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Jollon said health officials are only four months into studying COVID-19, and in response to the pandemic, there has been confusion about reporting and data collection.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know it\u2019s frustrating for people to not understand everything about the virus,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we don\u2019t know everything about the virus yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible, she said, that after further study, it could turn out the man\u2019s death from congestive heart failure was in fact driven by the coronavirus. She likened the situation to the AIDs epidemic in the 1980s, when over time, deaths from pneumonia or cancer were ultimately attributed to the disease.<\/p>\n

Jollon said health experts initially thought COVID-19 was a respiratory disease. But upon more study, it turns out the virus can attack the cardiovascular system, cause heart damage or strokes and even prompt kidney failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re dealing with new viruses, it takes a long time to get the full picture,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd our job right now isn\u2019t to debate what the full picture is. Our job is to save lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

La Plata County is now reporting 72 positive cases, zero deaths because of COVID-19 and one death among positive cases.<\/p>\n

Smith identified the deceased man as Robert Kujath, who founded and was a pastor for Pine Valley Church in 1996.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s played a big role in a lot of people\u2019s lives,\u201d said Kujath\u2019s son, Scott, who is the current pastor of the church. \u201cWe knew he didn\u2019t die of COVID-19 \u2026 so to have the state come back and make those clarifications, we appreciated it.\u201d<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reporting system helps clear up distinctions in causes of deaths<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":91101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[685,819,28,29,686],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-91100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coronavirus-covid-19","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter","tag-san-juan-basin-health-department"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91100"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=91100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}