In the UK, a Covid death is recorded if a person has died within 28 days of the first positive test.
However, what the figures do not tell us is to what extent the virus is causing the death.
In some cases, it could be a major cause. In others, it could simply be a contributory factor or perhaps just present in a person’s system when they have died of something else entirely.
Theoretically, a 90-year-old cancer patient already on palliative care could die but have coronavirus in their system at the time of death. That could be recorded as a coronavirus death.
Categories