Fiji follows WHO criteria in dertemining COVID-19 deaths
HEALTH Ministry head of health protection Dr Aaalisha Sahukhan says Fiji follows World Health Organization criteria in determining whether or not a death is attributed to COVID-19.
Speaking at the Explain the Science 2 panel discussion on COVID-19 vaccines hosted by the Fiji National University, she said clinicians investigated symptoms and other details before attributing a death to COVID-19.
“So far from this outbreak we have recorded two deaths that we have attributed to COVID-19 and there were two deaths previously last year that were not part of this outbreak,” she said.
“But we have also had six deaths for people who tested positive for COVID-19 but they had pre-existing conditions they were already in hospital for that, they were suffering from very severe illnesses that in the end the doctors said that they died from these illnesses and not from COVID-19.”
She said the outbreak of the virus at the Colonial War Memorial Hospital began in an area with very sick patients.
“Unfortunately, the first ward that was hit was the acute medical ward so these were where the sickest people were managed, so they were already very sick, they had long standing chronic conditions that they were admitted for and because there was an outbreak in the hospital, they also tested positive for COVID.
“But the clinicians look at things like the symptoms that they had before they actually died, looking at all their blood results of the investigations and looking to see whether it actually correlates with a diagnosis of severe COVID-19 or it’s more towards the disease that they were actually admitted for in the first place.
“So this could be things hypothetically like congested cardiac failure, they have heart failure, already and they die, or chronic renal disease where the kidneys are failing because of long standing diabetes, for example.
“So this is what the clinicians look at and we follow the WHO criteria as well and then we can say no, it was not COVID that caused these deaths, these are the diseases they were admitted for, these already very severe diseases.”