GRANT COUNTY — All eight Grant County residents who were sickened by COVID-19 and later died passed away as a direct result of the coronavirus and not circumstantially, according to state and county health officials.

Earlier on in the pandemic, a death from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, was reported fairly quickly if a patient was diagnosed with the disease and their condition had continued to worsen leading up to their death, county health officials stated earlier this month.

In mid-June, however, county-level health officials across the state began waiting to report a COVID-19 death until they had confirmation of the cause of death from the patient’s death certificate.

The state also began a process of reviewing previously reported deaths, removing those who had died of unrelated causes from its database. On July 14, the state Department of Health reported that 65 of 1,458 previously reported deaths were unrelated to their COVID-19 diagnosis, of which nine were due to homicide, suicide or accident and another 56 were due to other, natural causes.

The state also reported another 92 cases which were either pending further review or where COVID-19 was otherwise not ruled out as a possible contributing factor.

To review previously reported COVID-19 deaths, state officials turned to death certificates, which can either be certified by a physician or the county coroner, depending on the circumstances of the death.

In the case of Robert Hammond, who was a 96-year-old World War II veteran and retired potato farmer, the death certificate shared with the Herald by Hammond’s family was clear. Shortly after midnight on June 11, Hammond became the fifth county resident infected with the virus to die, and the cause of death listed by his physician was “COVID-19 respiratory infection.”

In some cases, the death certificates can be more complicated, explained County Coroner Craig Morrison in an interview, with a more immediate cause of death being listed as pneumonia or similar respiratory disease, which was in turn caused by COVID-19.

If someone died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, for example, the death certificate “would want to know, OK, due to what?” Morrison said. “Was this COPD due to emphysema, due to smoking? If they died from a heart attack, was it due to some kind of cardiac disease, which would be something that contributed to the heart attack?”

For almost all of Grant County’s COVID-19 deaths, that top-line cause of death has been Adult Respiratory Disease Syndrome, which occurred in a patient due to their coronavirus infection, said Theresa Adkinson, Grant County Health District administrator, in an interview. This is common with infectious diseases, Adkinson added, where the infection itself is not what causes death, but rather the symptoms or immune response caused by the disease.

“But they would not have gotten these illnesses if they hadn’t caught COVID,” Adkinson explained.

Pre-existing health conditions do play a part, Adkinson added, and those are noted on a deceased’s death certificate.

“There’s another part of the death certificate that allows you to expound on that,” Morrison continued. “Someone dies of pneumonia, and that was due to pulmonary emphysema, and diabetes or hypertension contributed to that death, for example.”

On Hammond’s death certificate, for instance, Parkinson’s disease, heart disease, pulmonary disease and hypertension, among others, were listed as conditions contributing to death. However, Adkinson said, not all of those who have died or who have suffered long-term health effects from the virus have these types of pre-existing conditions, with diabetes and hypertension being the most commonly seen.

“Some folks who were hospitalized didn’t even realize they have an underlying health condition,” Adkinson told reporters at a news briefing earlier this month.

And though much focus has been placed on the effect of the virus on the elderly, two Grant County men in their 50s have also been among those to pass away after being sickened by COVID-19. More working-age adults have also suffered long-term health effects as a result of this disease, Adkinson stated at the press briefing, including lung damage.

“There are those that haven’t passed away, but they’re in bad shape for the rest of their lives after this, and they didn’t even know they had any underlying conditions,” Adkinson said. “Some of these people were going to work every day and living with one of these.”