City now has the highest deaths in Lake County

After weeks of relatively low numbers, the COVID-19 death toll in recent days tripled to 49, after city and health officials re-examined how they count cases and fatalities from the disease.

With the latest death toll, Gary now has the highest number of COVID-19 fatalities than any city in Lake County as questions remain about the city’s past counting and reporting practices in providing vital information to the public.

On May 26, Mayor Jerome Prince in his daily update reported that “a small team of health department officials and data analysts closely examined our reporting methodology for reporting the number of COVID-19 positive test results and COVID-19 related deaths in Gary.”

Prince did not state specifically what went wrong or the mistakes that were made while counting the number of deaths and cases in Gary, but no updated coronavirus reports were provided on May 26 after the city re-examined the data that Memorial Day weekend.

On May 27, the city resumed its daily reports and reported that 47 residents in Gary died from COVID-19 deaths, five days after reporting that 16 residents had died from the disease.