The footnote on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s COVID Data Tracker website, announced that “algorithmic error” caused deaths from the COVID-19 virus to be overcounted by nearly 24%.

Last week, the CDC said that nearly a quarter of coronavirus deaths among children were overcounted due to a “coding logic error,” but this week the agency admitted that the virus-related deaths were overcounted in all age groups.

“On March 15, 2022, data on deaths were adjusted after resolving a coding logic error. This resulted in decreased death counts across all demographic categories,” the CDC’s footnote read.

The agency said that fixing this error removed 72,277 deaths previously reported across 26 states, including 416 pediatric deaths.

More than 968,000 people in the US have died of COVID-19, per CDC data, with age group data available for 784,303 of these deaths. Only 1,356 of these people were under the age of 18, meaning children accounted for just 0.17% of all COVID-19 deaths in the US for which there is data.

Despite the fact that children are at a relatively lower risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19, the masking of schoolkids has been a contentious issue in the US. The CDC late last month eased its mask guidance, stating that in areas of ‘low’ and ‘medium’ community transmission of the virus, children would no longer have to wear face masks in schools.

However, the National Education Association (NEA) still called on schools to ‘act cautiously’ and not immediately abandon any measures they see fit. Officials in some states have refused to unmask children, with New York City Health Commissioner Ashwin Vasan stating last week that masking kids would be his “indefinite” policy.