Chinese doctors discouraged from citing COVID-19 on death certificates

Chinese doctors are being discouraged from writing COVID as a cause of death in death certificates, several sources told Reuters. 

Six public hospital doctors in China have said they received orders “to try not to” attribute deaths to COVID-19 if the patient also had other health diseases, reported Reuters. Instead, doctors should write the other diseases as the main cause of death. 

If doctors believe that a death was caused solely by COVID-19, they then have to report it to their superiors, who will arrange “expert consultations” before they can confirm that the death was indeed caused by covid. 

Some of the doctors have received oral instructions discouraging them to attribute deaths to COVID-19, while others have seen printed notices posted in their departments. 

Additionally, some of the relatives of individuals that have died from COVID-19 have complained that the disease did not appear on their death certificates. 

"We have stopped classifying COVID deaths since the reopening in December," said a doctor at a large public hospital in Shanghai. "It is pointless to do that because almost everyone is positive."

The orders to stop reporting COVID-19-related deaths have brought criticism from the World Health Organization and global health experts, who believe that China is underreporting the extent of the pandemic in the country. 

On Saturday, Chinese officials reported that 60,000 individuals have died from COVID-19 since the country started opening up in early December after abandoning its “zero-COVID” regime. Before Saturday, the Chinese government was reporting five or fewer COVID-19 deaths a day.