NYT Issues Embarrassing Correction On COVID Data It Published

NYT Issues Embarrassing Correction On COVID Data It Published

Laurel Duggan on May 20, 2022

The New York Times issued a correction Thursday to an article which falsely stated 4,000 children aged 5-11 had died of a COVID-related illness.

“An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the numbers of children aged 5 to 11 with multisystem inflammatory syndrome. About 4,000 have been diagnosed, not died, with the syndrome,” the NYT correction read. The correction was issued after the false statement was mocked on social media.

The error occurred in a section of the outlet’s Daily Covid Briefing about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending vaccine boosters for children aged 5 to 11. The article used MIS, child hospitalizations during the Omicron surge and child COVID-19 deaths to emphasize the importance of boosters for this age group.

“Many parents have hesitated to immunize their children, in part because they are at much lower risk of severe disease than adults,” an earlier version of the article read. “But record numbers of children were hospitalized during the Omicron surge this winter. Nearly 4,000 children aged 5 to 11 have died from a Covid-related condition called multisystem inflammatory syndrome during the pandemic. And some studies find that even children who have a mild illness may experience symptoms for months.”

I mean… https://t.co/lgfXFrG1Ni pic.twitter.com/b2dZwj5Fsx

— Karol Markowicz (@karol) October 8, 2021

This isn’t the first time the NYT has issued a major correction after publishing inaccurate information about COVID-19; the outlet claimed 900,000 children had been hospitalized with COVID-19 in an October article, then issued a correction stating that only about 63,000 had been hospitalized.

The New York Times and Apoorva Mandavilli, the article’s author, did not respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment