In a bid to play down the number of the COVID-19 deaths, Singapore is excluding infected victims who died from heart attacks.
A 53-year-old man died from heart attack on Saturday (May 9th), and he was tested to be positive after his death. This is the 4th case of coronavirus patients dying from heart attack, and being excluded from the Singapore COVID-19 reporting figures.
The Ministry of Health defended its number manipulation claiming that this is “international practice”:
“Only cases where the attending doctor or pathologist attributes the primary or underlying cause of death as due to Covid-19 infection will be added to the death count, as is consistent with international practice for classifying deaths.”
However, the Australian Heart Research Institute pointed out that the coronavirus contributes to increased rates of heart attacks:
“As COVID-19 affects the lungs, this can have knock-on effects on the heart. The lungs and heart are interconnected, with the lungs oxygenating the blood the heart pumps. This puts someone with heart disease at more risk, simply because they don’t have as good a reserve to deal with this added complication to their health.”
The official death toll in Singapore is 21, excluding the 4 heart attack victims. There are now 23,822 confirmed cases in Singapore, with daily reporting the highest in Asia.