Covid's Hidden Sepsis Toll Emerges as Studies Find It in up to 93% of Deaths but Just 9% Were Coded

3d rendering of red coronavirus microbe cells; Sepsis was listed on fewer than one in 10 US death certificates involving COVID-19 in 2020. (Credit: Wirestock/Magnific)

Sepsis appeared in 9.3% of US COVID-19-related death records in 2020, according to a peer-reviewed analysis published on 29 June 2023. The study examined 384,536 deaths in which COVID-19 was recorded as an underlying or contributing cause.

Separate hospital research identified sepsis in 26 of 28 patients who died with COVID-19, approximately 93%. Those figures concern different populations and cannot establish how many US deaths involved sepsis that went unrecorded.