Death Cases Reconciled

On September 23rd, members of the Borough's Public Health Department and OEM, Joan Brennan and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., sent a request to Camden County Health Officer & Public Health Coordinator, Dr. Paschal Nwako, to ask for a reassessment of the sudden increase in Covid-19 deaths identified in Merchantville between Friday, September 18th and 21st. Merchantville suspected that the county had accidentally attributed deaths to Merchantville residents rather than Pennsauken residents who shared our 08109 zip code. The Borough has been following county case and death data tracking for seven months so, the unexpected jump from three (3) to eleven (11) deaths over the weekend was very concerning. Dr. Nwako's team, who had recently evaluated the county deaths numbers to align with the state confirmed deaths numbers available at www.covid19.nj.gov., worked to cross-check the addresses within the 08109 zip code to determine if these persons were indeed residents of Merchantville when the deaths occurred. On Wednesday, October 7th, the Camden County Division of Emergency Management published reconciled all "deaths by municipality" as identified by the County Health Officer and the number of deaths in Merchantville, attributed to Covid-19, was reduced from eleven (11) to one (1).