NOT all fatalities involving Covid-19 positive cases are counted as death because of the coronavirus, said anaesthetist and intensive care specialist Dr Nurilyani Bujang.

In a post on the Health Ministry’s Facebook page today, Nurilyani said there are two categories of death linked to Covid-19 – one caused by the coronavirus infection itself and the second from a different cause.

Deaths caused by Covid-19 infections are announced by director-general of health Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah in the daily updates and are included in the official statistics.

As for the second category, these will not be included in the official Covid-19 death toll. It will, however, be kept as an internal record by the ministry.

Nurilyani was commenting on the confusion on social media on whether the ministry was under-reporting death cases. A next of kin raised questions on why her late father was not included in the list although he was Covid-19 positive when he died.

Examples of such cases would be the deceased lost their life due to injuries from an accident but is Covid-19 positive. In this case, the cause of death will be an accident.

A patient admitted to the hospital for being Covid-19 positive but contracted and succumbed to a lung infection during the course of the treatment will also fall into the second category.

This is because the cause of death is lung infection and not Covid-19.

“Such cases will be thoroughly scrutinised by the specialists treating the patient to determine the actual cause of death.”

Similarly, a patient who succumbed to a heart attack but was later found to be Covid-19 positive will be considered as death due to heart attack and not Covid-19.

Nurilyani said there are procedures in place to determine whether the root cause of death of a positive case is Covid-19.

Only after the cause of death is ascertained by the in-house specialist, will the report be sent to the Crisis Preparedness and Response Centre.

Nevertheless, she said, the body in both categories will be handled in accordance to Covid-19 guidelines.

As such, close contacts and family members will also be screened and quarantined. – January 14, 2021.