JERUSALEM (VINnews) — 120 prominent doctors and medical professionals in Israel, including world-famous professors, hospital directors, epidemiologists and emergency care specialists called on Prime Minister Netanyahu, the health minister and the coronavirus project manager to make a renewed count of those who died of COVID-19.
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During a discussion by the coronavirus cabinet it was revealed that the health ministry has directed hospitals to register anyone who passed away in hospital who also had COVID-19 as having died from the coronavirus. However according to estimates of expert epidemiologists, in at least 30% of cases registered as having died of COVID-19, the main cause of death was not the virus.
Dr. Amir Shacharm, the director Laniado’s emergency department and formerly director of Sheba hospital’s emergency room, said that “since the health ministry directed to register on every death certificate the word ‘coronavirus’, we need to know whether to attribute the cause of death to COVID-19 or to a complication from COVID-19 with regard to all those who have the virus mentioned among the various diagnoses which caused their death.”
Shachar says that this information is critical for understanding mortality from the virus and defining its danger level. According to health ministry figures, 1031 Israelis had died of COVID-19 as of Tuesday out of 135,288 sick persons, a ratio of 0.74% which is similar to the mortality from flu. If we add those people who were exposed to the virus and did not get it, the ration is much smaller and if we assume that not all of those who died had the cause of death as coronavirus, the number becomes almost infinitesimal and a lockdown will not change matters significantly.
Professor Asher Alhiani, the director-general of the Meuhedet HMO and a former hospital director, said that “since the government decisions affecting the lives and health of millions of Israelis are taken based on numbers and data quoted daily in the media, it is doubly important regarding COVID-19 that the numbers be absolutely precise. A thorough examination of the causes of deaths of those who died with the virus is imperative and therefore the health ministry must immediately conduct such an examination
Dying with covid vs. Dying from covid