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View all search resultsNo plans to redefine COVID-19 deaths: Task force
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T
he national COVID-19 task force has dismissed a proposal to redefine what constitutes a COVID-19 fatality, after it was suggested that deaths among people with comorbidities should be categorized separately in the official tally.
Previously, East Java Governor Khofifah Indar Parawansa had suggested to Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto that COVID-19 deaths among patients with comorbidities – the simultaneous presence of two chronic diseases or conditions in a patient – should be categorized differently from deaths among patients without comorbidities in the death toll.
“As of now, the government has no plans to make the change proposed by the East Java governor,” task force spokesperson Wiku Adisasmito said in a statement issued on Tuesday.
He added that the government followed the World Health Organization’s guidelines in tallying COVID-19 deaths, which is to count all deaths of people with confirmed or probable cases of coronavirus infection, with exceptions made for unrelated causes of deaths, such as traffic accidents.
Probable cases refer to people who had not received their test results before their deaths, but who suffered from an upper respiratory tract infection (URTI) or acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which clinically suggest COVID-19 infection.
According to the task force, other countries such as the United States followed similar guidelines for counting coronavirus fatalities.
The East Java administration, which had recorded 3,035 COVID-19 fatalities and 41,755 confirmed cases as of Wednesday, has claimed that 91.1 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the province are patients who had comorbidities.
