When there is not a definitive Covid-19 diagnosis, a doctor is not likely to put the virus as a cause of death unless they have a very good reason to from clinical or epidemiologic information (such as everyone else in the family tested positive).

The argument stems from the fact that the vast majority of the more than 185,000 people who have died of Covid-19 in the US have multiple causes listed on their death certificate.

Many people reason that since only 6 per cent of people have Covid-19 listed as the sole cause, the other 94pc of deaths could be reasonably argued to have died of something else.

The fact is that instead of making us overcount the number of Covid-19 deaths, the difficulties figuring out the reasons people die are probably making us undercount them. Covid-19 tests are imperfect, and often give false negative results (the test says someone is not infected, but they actually do have the virus).

Read the full article from USA Today here.