Covid deaths: Due to or with?

The two old geezers would like their death certificates to reflect reality, not politics.

A recent scientific report in Nature reported that, among 530 in-hospital deaths registered as COVID-19 deaths in seven hospitals in Athens during the Omicron wave of the pandemic, a COVID-19-associated death was defined as ‘any death occurring in a person with positive testing for SARS-Cov-2 at the time of death.’

The researchers categorised deaths into two groups: (a) deaths “due to” COVID-19, where the infection was a direct cause or led to death, and (b) deaths “with” COVID-19, where the infection was unrelated to the cause of death. They used three sources for classification: the death certificate, the patient’s medical chart, and interviews with the attending physician using a structured questionnaire.

The reanalysis reported that 290 (55%) of deaths were classified as “due to” COVID-19. Of these, 133 (25%) cases, COVID-19 was determined to be the direct cause of death, while in 157 (30%) cases, COVID-19 was not the primary cause but contributed to the chain of events leading to d…