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posted by martyb on Sunday August 09 2020, @05:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the counting-where-it-counts dept.

England to revise DOWN its Covid-19 death toll by up to 10 percent after bizarre 'counting mishap':

Public Health England [(PHE)] currently counts the deaths of all people who have tested positive for Covid-19 among the coronavirus fatality total whether their death was related to the disease or not, an error which was noted in July, prompting the suspension of the daily death toll and an "urgent review" of protocol.

In other words, as many as 4,170 fatalities could be wiped off England's current Covid-19 death toll of 41,686.

According to reports in UKmedia, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock will bring all coronavirus fatality reporting in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland public health models, wherein a death is marked as Covid-19-related only if it occurs within 28 days of a positive test.

[...]

In England, of all deaths that occurred up to 24 July (registered up 1 August), 49,017 involved #COVID19. For the same period, @DHSCgovuk reported 41,143 COVID-19 deaths https://t.co/hKH0tTRb2W

— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) August 4, 2020

If the system is not updated, the total of roughly 265,000 confirmed cases in England would all eventually be counted as Covid-19 fatalities regardless of the actual cause of death.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @08:52PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2020, @08:52PM (#1034002)

    Not sure if this is really a medical as much as a legal issue. There are legal requirements for establishing a single primary “cause of death” that I believe go back centuries in common law, which was originally created for legal reasons (e.g., who may be at fault in a suspicious death, etc.). Most medical researchers clearly understand that there are many contributing factors to most deaths. But a coroner (in some jurisdictions not a medical professional at all) must write something on the legal document on the line “cause of death.”

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  • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 10 2020, @03:04AM

    by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday August 10 2020, @03:04AM (#1034166) Journal

    That's a great observation and I bumped you up a point for it. Nevertheless, I think my point still stands for a good reason.

    People tend to think that marriage as a single thing. It's not. It's a legal thing, it's a religious thing, and / or it's a personal thing. If four people say they are married because they clapped their hand eight times, then they are married in the sense at a personal level even if it's not legal. Who am I to say they aren't married? They just can't file their taxes jointly because the state doesn't recognize their marriage. Maybe you don't recognize their marriage either, but why would they care? That's something that they believe.

    The same principle applies here. Why would the medical community care about what a governmental agency says? If the medical community really wanted to keep track of how many people died from what (listing multiple causes), they could do it. Granted, it takes money and that's why it won't happen, but they could keep records that are better than a line in a coroner report.

    But again, good observation and one I hadn't thought of.