CHICAGO — For weeks, conspiracy theorists have accused public health and government officials of misleading the public by attributing too many deaths to the coronavirus.

On Tuesday, Illinois Dept. of Public Health Director Dr. Ngozi Ezike said such claims could not be further from the truth. In fact, she said, the number of deaths in the state are likely higher than what’s been reported.

Every time the state attributes a death to COVID-19, that assessment is based on a laboratory confirmation, Ezike said. For example, she said if someone showed up at the hospital with a gunshot wound and coronavirus, the death would be attributed to the gunshot wound — not COVID-19.

She said the state is now in the process of looking back on deaths in early March or late February that may have been caused by the virus before officials realized it had hit the state.

“As we learn more about the disease, there may have been less typical presentation of COVID-19 that were not appropriately attributed to COVID because there wasn’t a test done because the suspicion was not there,” Ezike said. “There [are] also some additional deaths [of people] who happened to be COVID-positive but the COVID infection had nothing to do with the death.”

But in cases where someone had cancer or was elderly, COVID hastened their deaths, Ezike said.

“When the deaths are reported to us, and if they have COVID-19 on the death certificate or on the data that we’re looking at … sometimes after further review we will see that maybe a motor vehicle accident … or if it was a gunshot case, a homicide case, if we see that was included in the numbers, we would have to adjust those numbers.”

But if someone had another illness, like heart disease, and they went on to have a stroke while battling coronavirus, it is not as easy to separate that and say COVID did not play a role in exacerbating an existing illness, she said, so that one would not be removed from the count.

Illinois saw its highest one-day total of new confirmed coronavirus cases Monday into Tuesday, as well as its highest number of tests, officials said.

A total of 4,114 new cases were identified, Ezike said.

In addition, Illinois suffered another grim 24-hour stretch as 144 more people died from COVID-19. There have now been 3,601 deaths in Illinois.

Block Club Chicago’s coronavirus coverage is free for all readers. Block Club is an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom.

Subscribe to Block Club Chicago. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods.

Already subscribe? Click here to support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.