Florida medical examiners no longer certifying COVID-19 death certificates

ORLANDO, Fla. - The Florida Medical Examiners Commission has done away with requiring medical examiners to certify COVID-19 death certificates. Some are concerned that this is taking away the second set of eyes, verifying the cause of death is in-fact the coronavirus.

“We would do what’s called a record review, we’d make sure they had a positive test, we’d make sure they had symptoms and we’d make sure they had pneumonia or some illness from it,” said Joshua Stephany, Chief Medical Examiner, Orange and Osceola Counties.

Orange and Osceola County Chief Medical Examiner, Doctor Joshua Stephany explained to FOX 35 that the process of verifying a coronavirus death is no longer happening. He said that usually, in Florida, deaths related to a declared State of Emergency have to be certified but it is typically a handful of deaths, not thousands.

“It over-taxed everybody, it over-taxed the medical examiners, the funeral homes, the families because what it did is created a domino effect of a backlog,” said Stephany. He added that some offices had a backlog of hundreds of death certificates, meaning families had to wait weeks to bury their loved ones.

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“They need that proof of death, they need that death certificate,” said Stephany. "People want to get on with the grieving process, cremate or bury.”

But the change is raising some eyebrows, seeing it as doing away with validation of the cause of death.

Governor Ron DeSantis said though that "people in Central Florida have highlighted some examples of you know, someone gets in a motorcycle crash because the person had COVID in the past, that counts as a COVID related death and I think the public looks at that and says ‘that’s ridiculous."

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“People are worried about independent review. All these clinicians are independent clinicians, they are not working for the state, they’re doing what they always do,” said Stephany. “I don’t think you’re going to miss any cases or the numbers are going to skew one way or the other just because we’re not doing it. The clinicians and the physicians are perfectly capable of signing death certificates on their own patients.”

The Medical Examiner said that COVID-19 deaths will still be reported to the state the same way and that this just cuts out the middle step.

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