Can someone explain the difference between testing positive for Coronavirus and dying from it

[Bearbehind]

The announcement about deaths linked with Coronavirus tends to say ‘the person had significant underlying health conditions and tested positive for Coronavirus’

Does that mean it was or wasn’t CV that actually led to their death?

My personal view is that an awful lot of people actually have it currently or have already had it. That’s just based on how random the spread of cases seemingly is.

For example, the deaths in hospitals don’t seem to have been associated with outside cases - they just appear to be isolated incidences where the virus was present when tested

If that is true though then although the number of cases is much higher, the severity is much lower.

Take recent high profile cases like Tom Hanks or Nadine Dorries - they’ve both tested positive but don’t appear to have been very ill with it

Could it be a lot of us have / had it and that the deaths are generally not entirely due to it, but rather other factors, and it just also happens to be present?

Sorry - that title isn’t very clear!

I mean the difference only for patients who have died

Obviously there’s a difference in all other instances

It means the person had a weakened immune system due to their other condition(s) and their body couldn't cope with the virus, cause of death was coronavirus.

I think there is a delay between being infected and showing symptoms. So you might have the illness for a few days before you start to feel unwell, then you start experiencing symptoms so you are tested. Symptoms may then worsen as the illness develops.

I’m not sure if those who have died explicitly died from Coronavirus, or from underlying conditions made worse by Coronavirus - it’s probably difficult to determine this exactly.

It’s the same as the difference between having the flu and dying from it.

You can contract the disease without dying from it
All they are saying is that people with a weak immune system will have more chance of catching it and possibly dying

My understanding is it means the coronavirus was the final stress on the body, and the one that caused the death. But all the other health conditions contributed by weakening the system.
If you are totally healthy, and get Corona virus and die, it's pretty much the only thing that could have killed you.

Also people who would be fine but have e.g. diabetes, asthma, a weaker immune system in the background are more likely to die from the virus. There is no cure and it causes breathing problems in these people.

From what I understand corona virus primarily has a detrimental effect on the lungs. If you are generally healthy then as with many other illnesses , you are able to deal with the illness.

If you have existing health problems which could affect your breathing or lung function eg copd, asthma,obesity, bronchitis, pneumonia , lung cancer etc , or if you have a disease which affects your circulation such as diabetes or heart disease which would then be badly affected by reduced lung capacity then you are more likely to have a poor outcome. Similarly if you have an illness which means you have a poor immune system then you would be more vunerable.

Since many of those illnesses are more prevelant in an older population old people are at more risk of death from the virus.

My understanding is it means the coronavirus was the final stress on the body, and the one that caused the death.

That’s not what they say though

I find the wording intriguing

It’s nearly always that they had underlying health condition and tested positive for CV

Not that they died from CV

It's because medically speaking you don't die
from the flu - you die from its consequences- eg pneumonia, heart failure etc.

Coronavirus is killing the patient because they wouldn't be sick in the way that they were if they didn't have coronavirus. However, their actual primary cause of death may be pneumonia, diabetic ketoacidosis, pulmonary oedema, sepsis, multi- organ failure, etc.

An example may be someone with fairly severe chronic kidney disease and COPD, who is being managed with drug therapies. If they contract coronavirus, it could give them pneumonia, send them into total kidney failure, etc. Their primary cause of death (part 1a of their certificate) would be the actual process that killed them. Part 1b would likely be coronavirus, because it was part of the process of their demise, and part 2 would be any condition that contributed to their death, so Chronic Kidney Disease, COPD, Obesity, etc.

By the time someone has presented at hospital as having Coronavirus, they will be quite ill unless they were tested because of a known link. If they have underlying conditions, they'll get more ill, more quickly. As there is no actual treatment for coronavirus, it will just be a case of supporting their organs until they either improve or die.

By the time someone has presented at hospital as having Coronavirus, they will be quite ill unless they were tested because of a known link.

I guess this is the part I’m trying to understand

If they didn’t go into hospital necessarily because of CV symptoms, would they be tested routinely as part of the certification of death?

I think when someone is that ill with breathing difficulties in hospital they are testing for Coronavirus.

I would assume they would be tested as soon as they were admitted for isolation and treatment purposes.

Some hospitals are now testing patients who have symptoms associated with coronavirus as routine testing. Those patients may already have been very unwell or dying for another reason.

If you test positive you have the virus, if you die from it you are dead