To date, more than 390,000 Americans have succumbed to COVID-19.
As of Saturday, there are 23,644,885 confirmed cases in the United States.
By the time you read this, it will be much higher, as officials warn we could experience another 92,000 deaths in under a month.
But the actual numbers are likely higher.
More Americans are dying of COVID-19 than at any time since the pandemic first arrived at our shores last March.
But many of those Americans dying from COVID-19-related complications like lung, heart, and organ damage are being issued death certificates that make no mention of COVID.
This can lead to their surviving family members being denied death benefits and other COVID relief.
An example is Pentecostal Bishop Bruce Davis, who died in April after being hospitalized.
His wife, Gwendolyn, reported receiving the death certificate that listed her husband's cause of death as sepsis and renal failure.
She explained:
"He wouldn't have had kidney failure if he didn't have Covid."
That omission cost her when Gwendolyn applied to and was denied two pandemic relief programs to help defray $1,500 in missed car and electricity payments.
Then there's Bruce's employer, Mark DeLong, who succumbed to COVID despite his death certificate stating he suffered from "cardiopulmonary arrest, respiratory failure and diabetes."
95-year-old Dorothy Payton died in April at ManorCare nursing home in Denver, Colo. five days after first showing COVID symptoms.
Documentation states, however, she suffered from "vascular dementia, atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure, gait instability, difficulty swallowing and 'failure to thrive'."
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