(WASHINGTON, D.C) — Following confusion due to the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that only six percent of the nation’s COVID-19 death toll — which stands at over 180,000 — died from just the virus.  

The report said that 94 percent of COVID deaths also demonstrated an underlying condition, like pneumonia and cardiac arrest.

Doctor Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious disease expert, condemned the politicization of the report to undermine COVID-19’s severity.

“Let there not be any confusion… It’s not 9,000 deaths from COVID-19. It’s 180,000-plus deaths,” Fauci told Good Morning America on Tuesday. “The point that the CDC was trying to make was that a certain percentage of [deaths] had nothing else but COVID” 

In all, Fauci summarized, “That does not mean that someone who has hypertension, or diabetes who dies of COVID didn’t die of COVID-19. They did.”

The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) explained that it is standard practice for death certificates to list any causes or conditions that may have contributed to a fatality.

The report from the CDC, as explained by the NCHS, that 92 percent of all COVID-19 deaths lists the novel coronavirus as the underlying cause of death.  That number rises to 94 percent if death certificates that list COVID-19 in addition to conditions like respiratory failure or diabetes.

COVID-19 has sickened over six million Americans and killed over 184,500 as of Tuesday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.