An online post claims that nobody who died of COVID-19 did so at home. “No one was found dead at home from Covid19 … everyone died while they were in the hospital,” it reads. “LET THAT SINK IN.”
The claim is false: More than 100,000 Americans died of COVID-19 in their homes. The claim is a product of conspiracy theories that have arisen since 2020 claiming that COVID-19 treatment, not the disease itself, is responsible for patient deaths.
“Obviously, this is a false statement. Any director of a nursing home will tell you people died outside of a hospital,” Dr. David Alain Wohl, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Institute of Global Health and Infectious Diseases, told The Dispatch Fact Check.
Does it matter where the million-plus people who died of COVID-19 in our nation passed? … Do we have to care where they breathed their last breath?”
In a 2022 paper published in Open Forum Infectious Diseases—a peer-reviewed journal operated by the Infectious Diseases Society of America—Wohl and co-author Dr. Jessie Edwards found that between March 1, 2020, and December 31, 2021, nearly 8 percent of COVID-19 deaths in North Carolina occurred in peoples’ homes.
A similar percentage was recorded nationally by federal health officials. According to data recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, between 2020 and 2023, 10 percent of individuals who died of COVID-19 in the U.S. did so at home, or almost 116,000 people. Deaths in a hospital or emergency room accounted for approximately 69 percent of COVID-19 deaths and 18 percent occurred in nursing homes or long-term care facilities. The remaining 3 percent of deaths happened in other or unreported settings.
If you have a claim you would like to see us fact check, please send us an email at factcheck@thedispatch.com. If you would like to suggest a correction to this piece or any other Dispatch article, please email corrections@thedispatch.com.
Please note that we at The Dispatch hold ourselves, our work, and our commenters to a higher standard than other places on the internet. We welcome comments that foster genuine debate or discussion—including comments critical of us or our work—but responses that include ad hominem attacks on fellow Dispatch members or are intended to stoke fear and anger may be moderated.
With your membership, you only have the ability to comment on The Morning Dispatch articles. Consider upgrading to join the conversation everywhere.