Guardian Claims More Than 2,900 Healthcare Worker COVID Deaths

The left-leaning British-based newspaper The Guardian is claiming more than 2,900 healthcare workers in the United States have died from COVID-19 or related causes, basing its number on an analysis it conducted with Kaiser Health News.

The paper says the total is "far higher number than that reported by the government," but never cites a number of deaths publicized by any governmental agency.

Its figure of 2,921 is published in "Lost on the Frontline," a nine-month data project the paper conducted with Kaiser Health News, the independent news arm of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that calls itself a nonpartisan source for facts, polling, and analysis on healthcare, but it has given overwhelmingly to Democrat candidates since 1992, according to OpenSecrets.org.

The Guardian said nearly a quarter of the deaths, 680, it calculated have occurred in New York and New Jersey, the states which also have the highest death rates per 1 million of the population, according to Worldometers.info.

New Jersey is the only state with a death rate from COVID-19 or COVID-19-related causes of more 2,000, at 2,130 deaths per million, and New York is the only state other than New Jersey above 1,800, at 1,935.

"Since the first months of the pandemic, more than 70 reporters at The Guardian and KHN have scrutinized numerous governmental and public data sources, interviewed the bereaved and spoken with healthcare experts to build a count," The Guardian reported.

It said it compiled its number based on figures provided by labor unions, obituaries, news reporting, and online postings by family members.

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