Today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a study of thousands of so-called Long COVID deaths, where patients who had recovered from the virus ultimately died after experiencing lingering symptoms from the disease.

MuckRock replicated the CDC's work with our own death certificate analysis in New Mexico, Minnesota and counties in California and Illinois. We found stories of people who lost their lives to Long COVID, like Mary Lou Oslund, a 93-year-old who lived in a Minnesota nursing home.

“When you have something that traumatic that’s affecting your body, it makes sense that a few months later, you’re not going to be 100% back to normal — if ever,” said Oslund's daughter, Pam Hentges.

In reviewing death certificates, the CDC study found that Long COVID played a role in at least 3,544 deaths between January 2020 and the end of June 2022. While these deaths represent less than 1% of the more than 1 million Americans who have died from COVID-19, the review found that certificates naming Long COVID as a contributing factor increased this year — suggesting increased recognition of the dangers posed by long-term symptoms in 2022.

Still, experts who reviewed the CDC’s study said it almost assuredly represented a vast undercount of Long COVID deaths nationwide. And the small number of discovered Long COVID deaths speaks to systematic issues with health data systems in the U.S., which assumes everyone quickly recovers from contagious diseases with no long-term impacts, said Ziyad Al-Aly, a physician and chief of research and development at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, who has extensively studied Long COVID through VA medical records.

The CDC report is “a victim of the archaic data systems that don’t allow you to accurately capture the toll of disease and death in this epidemic of Long COVID,” Al-Aly said.

This story is part of both MuckRock's Uncounted project and our efforts to investigate government responses to Long COVID. If you have Long COVID or are otherwise part of this community, please reach out to us here.

Text excerpted from reporting by Dillon Bergin, Betsy Ladyzhets, and Derek Kravitz. Chart by Karen Wang.

▶ Conversations with Data: MuckRock reporters Betsy Ladyzhets and Dillon Bergin are featured on DataJournalism.com's Conversations with Data podcast this week. The episode is a recording of our reporters' Q&A in the DataJournalism.com Discord server a couple of weeks ago, discussing how MuckRock collaborates with academic experts and other newsrooms and answering questions from the live audience. Listen to the episode here.

▶ MuckRock is hiring a front-end developer: We're seeking a developer who will own the Svelte front end for DocumentCloud, helping to expand the utility of this platform. The position is remote and has a starting salary of $85,000. Learn more and apply here!

• SBF charged with fraud: Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was arrested in the Bahamas and charged with eight counts of fraud. Matthew Russell of Inner City Press posted his indictment on DocumentCloud.
• Smoking emails: In July, journalist Greta Moran requested email correspondence between the North Carolina Department of Labor and several major tobacco companies. The request was completed this week.
• Beer labels: MuckRock's Michael Morisy requested copies of rejected applications for beer labels from the U.S. Department of Treasury, Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, with a focus on images of those labels. Read more about the U.S.'s beer label czar from the Daily Beast's Tim Mak.

For The Record was written by Betsy Ladyzhets and edited by Michael Morisy.