Oklahoma health officials reported 85 additional deaths due to the coronavirus on Thursday. No further details were provided.
Yesterday, the state announced it would begin using a Provisional Death Count in its daily updates, which reflects COVID deaths based on death certificates. It's the same measure the CDC uses. Recently, Oklahoma's reported death count was about 2,500 deaths shy of what the CDC was reporting. Under the new standard, there have been a total of 7,122 deaths due to the virus since last March.
Under normal circumstances, the 85 deaths would amount to Oklahoma's largest single-day increase in COVID deaths since the beginning of the pandemic.
While the state is using a Provisional Death Count in its weekday emails, that number does not yet appear on the state's coronavirus update website.
895 new infections were reported, for a total of 426,641 positive cases since last March. In the past seven days, Oklahoma has reported 4,485 new cases for an average of 641 infections per day, its lowest level since July.
408,963 people — more than 96 percent of the total cases — have since been classified as having recovered from the virus.
There are 12,379 active cases in the state.
