Quote:
Definition and certification of deaths due to COVID-19
For surveillance purposes, the WHO defines a death due to COVID-19 as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness, in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery from COVID-19 between illness and death.
In the international guidelines for certifying COVID-19 as a cause of death, certifiers are instructed to record COVID-19 on the medical certificate of cause of death for all decedents where the disease caused, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death. When certifying the cause of death, the physician, coroner or medical examiner is asked to report the sequence of morbid events leading to death as well as any conditions that contributed to that sequence. This is meant to reflect their informed opinion and can be reported with a single or multiple causes of death. When two or more causes are reported, the WHO ICD-10 rules and guidelines for coding and selecting the underlying cause of death for statistical tabulation are applied. The code for one cause is selected as underlying cause and the others are retained as multiple cause of death codes.
The COVID-19 death certification instructions include mention of the possibility that death may have been influenced by COVID-19 but caused by another disease or an unintentional injury.
In an effort to reach as many medical practitioners and other qualified certifiers as possible, Statistics Canada shared this information with federal, provincial and territorial partners
Selecting COVID-19 as Underlying Cause of Death
Deaths due to COVID-19, as displayed on Statistics Canada’s website, are those for which COVID-19 was found to be the underlying cause of death (UCOD), defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as (a) the disease or injury which initiated the train of events leading directly to death, or (b) the circumstances of the accident or violence which produced the fatal injury.
When a pre-existing condition is suspected of putting a person at higher risk of a severe course of COVID-19 resulting in death, the death is counted as a death due to COVID-19 rather than a death due to the pre-existing condition.
It is also possible that the death may have been influenced by COVID-19 but caused by another disease or an unintentional injury event. In these situations, COVID-19 should still be recorded on the medical certificates of cause of death, but would not be considered a death due to COVID-19.
The statistics in this paper are based on deaths where COVID-19 was identified as the underlying cause of death in the provisional CVSD data, released on October 28th, 2020, and covering deaths occurring between January 1, 2020, and July 31, 2020.
And since 80% of all 'Covid' deaths happend in LTCs with people who had preexisting conditions....