The Why: Philly Explained

During the deadliest months of the pandemic so far, Pennsylvania’s new electronic death reporting system was not ready for prime time. The state still relied on faxes — yes, faxes — from funeral directors, doctors and medical examiners to create an official death record. Sara Simon dug into the delays for Spotlight PA, along with WHYY’s Nina Feldman and Ryan Briggs. She explains that just when public officials were making tough decisions about how to allocate scarce resources, like COVID-19 tests and PPE, the state did not have an accurate count of how many people had actually died from the virus.