New York’s coronavirus death toll jumps by more than 3,700 amid new counting measures

New York’s coronavirus death toll soared by more than 3,700 people on Tuesday after the city had included people who were presumed to have died of the virus but had never tested positive.

The new figures, released by the city’s Health Department, bring the total number of people killed in New York City to more than 10,000, while the overall United States death count has increased by 17 percent to more than 26,000.

Far more people have died in New York City, on a per-capita basis, than in Italy — the hardest-hit nation in Europe.

Top health officials said they had identified another grim reality that the outbreak is likely to have also led indirectly to a surge in the number of deaths of New Yorkers who may never have been infected.

Three thousand more people died in the city between March 11 and April 13 than would have been expected during the same time period in an ordinary year, Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the commissioner of the New York Health Department, said in an interview with the New York Times.