A viral Facebook post shared over 3,000 times claims nobody has died from COVID-19 at home.

Verdict: False

Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that over 9,700 people died from COVID-19 in their homes from the week ending Feb. 1 to the week ending Sept. 12.

Fact Check: 

Social media platforms are replete with misinformation related to COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. This particular post claims “nobody is found dead of corona in their homes..they all died at the hospital.”

That is, however, incorrect. Provisional death count data from the CDC shows that over 9,700 COVID-19 deaths had the decedent’s home listed as the place of death from the week ending Feb. 1 to the week ending Sept. 12. In the same time period, over 118,200 COVID-19 deaths had “Healthcare Setting, Inpatient” and over 39,000 had “Nursing Home or Long Term Care Facility” listed as the place of death, according to the CDC data.

ProPublica reported in early July that Houston Fire Department data showed there was a growing number of Houston area residents dying at home. Harris County medical examiner data showed that an increasing number of those at-home deaths were later confirmed to be from COVID-19, according to the outlet. For example, 54-year-old Felipa Medellín died from the disease at her home in the Houston area on June 22.

Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, told ProPublica that the increase in at-home deaths reflects how COVID-19 can cause serious heart problems that can lead to sudden death. (RELATED: Did The CDC Revise Its COVID-19 Death Count To Show That Only 9,210 People ‘Actually Died’ From COVID-19?)

“And it seems to be happening both early and late in the course of the illness,” Hotez said. “So patients are recovering and then they’ll come home from the hospital and they’ll die. Or they were never diagnosed, and the first manifestation is sudden death. So that’s a very frightening aspect of COVID-19 and why we need to work so hard to slow the spread, because you don’t even get the chance to seek medical attention.”