China's chicanery continues as doctors told not to cite Covid on death certificates

Beijing: Doctors in China have been instructed not to write Covid-induced respiratory failure on death certificates.

Instead of Covid as the cause, doctors should attribute the death to an underlying disease, according to the notice received by health officials.

However, if doctors believe that a death has been solely caused by Covid-19, they must report to their supervisors who will then arrange for two levels of “expert consultations” before a death is confirmed.

Six doctors from public hospitals across China told Reuters that they have received similar oral instructions which discourage them to put Covid as the cause of death on certificates.

Lately, some relatives of the deceased have questioned authorities about why the real cause did not appear on the death certificates.

“We have stopped classifying COVID deaths since the reopening in December,” a doctor at a large public hospital in Shanghai said.

“It is pointless to do that because almost everyone is positive,” he added.

Directives like these have invited criticism from all over the world including from World Health Organisation. WHO has claimed that China has been underreporting Covid deaths while cases continue to surge following the abrupt end of the zero-Covid policy.

Guidance came from ‘the government’

Several doctors who wished to stay anonymous as they are not allowed to talk to the media said that this order has come from “the government”.

However, three other doctors have reportedly said that they were unaware of any such guidance.

A senior emergency room doctor in Shandong province said that while doctors have been mentioning the actual cause of death on certificates, the categorisation of those deaths has been left to the hospitals or local officials.

‘Too unimportant to take decisions’

Many doctors are forced to abide by the government directive saying that they have no other option.

A doctor from a large public hospital in Shanghai said, “On the death certificate we fill in one main cause of death, and two to three sub-causes of death, so we basically leave out COVID,” she said.

She added, “There’s no other way but for us to follow the orders given by the hospital, which come from the government. I am too unimportant to make any decision.”

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