The healthcare system and the hospitals treating patients with COVID-19 have no interest in indicating that the person died from COVID-19 if this is not so, Svetlana Lupu, head of the Ministry of Health’s Hospital Medical Assistance Policies Division, said, referring to reports that the number of infections is artificially increased, IPN reports.
“No healthcare worker is interested in increasing the number of deaths of persons of whom they took care. There is no financial motivation or performance motivation for the medical personnel to declare a person without COVID-19 as having died from COVID-19,” Svetlana Lupu told a news conference.
She noted that the mechanism for stating and recording deaths in the case of patients with COVID-19 is similar to the one applied in the case of deaths of persons who didn’t contract the virus. The death is registered by the doctor who provided medical assistance to the patient. All the circumstances of the death, such as the main diagnosis, concomitant diagnoses, alleged and confirmed cases that led to death, are included in medical records.
The doctor also issues a death certificate. If the person who died had COVID-19, the document is submitted to the National Public Health Agency, which assesses the dead person’s file, registers the death and reports it nationwide.
The head of the National Public Health Agency Nicolae Furtună said the cause of death is never indicated as “COVID-19”. The person dies from other causes and the virus only aggravates the disease.
