Loncar: 10,356 deaths can be linked to coronavirus, December was the worst

At a press conference held on Wednesday, Minister of Health Zlatibor Loncar presented the results of the work of the Commission for Analysis of Lethal Outcomes Caused by the Covid-19 Disease.

Recommended

"At this time, we cannot come out with information that someone died from Covid. Why? The reason is extremely simple, in order to claim that someone died from coronavirus, you have to do an autopsy. We have not performed autopsies on anyone. For that reason, I asked the commission to come up with the number of people who can be linked to coronavirus," said Loncar.

He stressed that they cannot come out with the number of people who died from coronavirus, but with the number of people whose (deaths) can be linked to coronavirus.

"Here we include people who were hospitalized, those who had negative PCR and antigen tests, people who treated themselves, people who were brought to the doctor when they lost consciousness or had a heart attack. We will provide data on people who can be linked to coronavirus. We have data that whoever mentioned that someone died and was in contact with someone who was positive for coronavirus or that some of the symptoms resembled coronavirus symptoms, we took that data," the minister explained.

He remarked that health records, statements made by relatives, friends, death certificates have also been taken into account...

"The number of people (who died) that we have concluded to have had links to or can be linked to coronavirus for 2020 is 10,356. 64.6 percent of those people who died had comorbidities that were extremely serious, and the question is how they would have lived with them even without coronavirus," said the minister.

Comorbidities are circulatory diseases, high blood pressure, diabetes, neurological diseases.

The average age of victims is 72.2 years, three quarters are older than 65, two thirds are men, Loncar explained.

Asked whether they analyzed the period from March 19 until June 1, 2020, Loncar replied that it was more important for them to deal with the data for the whole year.

"As far as the Institute of Public Health is concerned, they arrived at data that shows about 5,000 people died," the minister pointed out.

He remarked that in 2020, 48 doctors died, some of whom were around 90 years old and were not close either to coronavirus or to a hospital.

As for the mortality rate between 2016 and 2019, the highest figure was in December 2019.

When asked why autopsies have not been performed, Loncar replied that the World Health Organization and professionals strictly forbade it.

"If we had done that, I believe we would have been seriously sanctioned," stressed Zlatibor Loncar.

(Telegraf.rs)