And so it starts to unravel

maddyone what we believe on a death certificate and how we interpreted it is up to each individual person, but if you are counting important statistics it’s vital and necessary to be clear how there are to be counted and for these statistics they decided that testing positive for CV needed to be no further back in time than 28 days so anyone dying after 28 days had passed should be counted as dying from whatever their illness was and not CV, and that does make sense for most cases but these cases have been incorrectly added to the CV deaths
So if I had CV in March and died of terminal cancer in May (62 days later) it should not be counted as a CV death but apparently has been
If nothing else it has just added to the list of cock ups

People have died from a pulmonary embolism but it has been subsequently found that this virus can cause that.

If a person had CV in February and recovered, but died three months later from cancer, then clearly that person did not die of CV. But if CV damaged their kidneys (which it can do) then CV was a contributory factor and should be on the death certificate.

Surely if someone died with the virus, rather than from the virus, then Covid19 is a contributory factor in their death, and should be on the death certificate along with whatever else killed them.

It reminds of my brother in law, who had cancer of the bowel. He died because he developed a pulmonary embolism, and that was the reason given on his death certificate. However, he wouldn’t have had the embolism if he hadn’t had cancer, because apparently cancer often causes people to develop blood clots. So to my mind, he died of cancer and the embolism, not just the embolism. But what do I know? I’m not a doctor.

Growstuff it’s like this if I had CV in February but died of cancer in May it should not have been counted as a CV death but it was and we have no idea in how many cases
Well it could be good news jennifereccles but it’s also dreadful news for the government that have cocked up more than enough, without this added on
They couldn’t get any figures right on the ‘world beating’ test and they have been proved to be wrong on nearly everything they have done from March onwards so it’s dreadful news for them but what a lot of us were saying right from day one

I’m another one who’s confused. If someone had Covid19 and died a couple of weeks later because their organs were damaged, or they developed a fatal blood clot, then surely Covid19 is a contributory cause of death. As well as that, countries all seem to be counting their Covid19 deaths according to different criteria. People died before the pandemic was properly recognised, and some died as a result of Covid19. I don’t think we’ll ever know the true scale, in this country or other countries. We may have to accept the best possible estimate.

It’s potentially good news as it means our death total is not as bad as we thought.

I have read on several occasions and it has been mentioned on threads here too that some of our total fatalities would have died with the virus not from it.

The news that many more of us could have had it is also potentially good, providing though that it’s certain that we then acquire immunity.

Until there are more antibody and T cells tests it’s only supposition.

I think many people have had coronavirus and as they have not been too ill, they have not been tested so it has gone unreported.

Some people have it and don't even know as they are asymptomatic.

We will probably never know how many people have had the virus.

Does that mean that someone who tested positive in April then dies in a traffic accident today counts as a Covid death?

What a shambles.
Surely it should be a doctor's decision whether covid was a major cause of a person's death, not a random number of days since a test.
For instance, if their heart was known to be weakened by the virus and gave out at a later date, then covid was a main cause of death.

Can somebody please explain how these new figures show that more people have had Covid-19 because I'm missing something.

That article is about deaths, not cases.

If more people have had it than show up in the statistics, the number of cases is being underreported.

I'm as sure as I can be that I've never had it.

If the four nations of the UK are counting differently how can we ever get accurate numbers worldwide.

I'm still convinced that a lot of people have immunity to it. Even so I still think we should have gone into lockdown sooner and should still be self isolating, working from home etc until we learn more about the virus.

I have a few thoughts on this

1: if the figures have been over reported, it's probably not many, maybe a few hundred.

2: Covid could still be responsiblef or some of those deaths because it has weakened the person in general.

3: There have been (off the top of my head so feel free to correct me) another 20 thousand deaths over the 5 year average for spring so some of those could make up the difference anyway.

Absolutely agree with you. My son definitely had it in January but he’s not in any statistics anywhere. The whole country could have had it and no one will ever know, so we could all have been isolating for nothing. I’m still not going out though!

I have long thought that figures worldwide could be totally inaccurate.

This latest news doesn't surprise me.
Unless there had been a world standard in recording deaths from COVID19 we will never know the true figure.