How do the doctors know if a person died of Covid or some other disease?

Question

I've read from multiple sources that in many countries if a dead person has covid in his or her organism it is registered as a covid victim.In the country were I live the health minister even said that we will 'treat all deaths as covid suspect'.I do not find a satisfactory official explanation on how they know if the virus has killed them or they died with the virus inside (e.g.: terminal ilness).Do you have some useful links on this?

sloaken · Accepted Answer

So let me run you through an interesting question: Let us assume a person falls ill from some issue requiring a hospital. They go to a hospital but because of all the Covid patients, they cannot get in and die on the street. Does that count?Because of the variable standards and testing methods, I have heard it said (probably on HN), the best standard is to compare last years death rate with this year. And that would be the number attributable to Covid.

giantg2 · Answer

It depends.Some places list patients who died as a coronavirus death if they have the symptoms. Some of this was prior to the increase in available tests. Some of this is to conserve the limited numer of gears for use by the living. It doesn't hurt them to list it a coronavirus death since they can get additional funding for coronavirus patients.