CINS: Number of coronavirus deaths could be higher than officially reported

Doctors Zoran Radovanovic and Branislav Tiodorovic told CINS that the number of dead could be higher because low number of people tested and the fact that only the deaths of people who tested positive for the coronavirus were included in the official count.  

Staff at the Clinical Center in Nis who insisted on anonymity told CINS that just a few patients were tested up to a month ago even though they all showed COVID-19 symptoms and were in the same hospital rooms as patients who did test positive.

They said the actual number of patients who died is higher than what the government’s pandemic Crisis Staff. “In one weekend alone there were 28 deaths. That is the total number and weren’t all infected,” one of the sources at the Clinical Center said. The source said that a number of people died in the lung disease ward and were not included in the official statistics because they had not been tested. According to the source, mass testing ensued after those deaths.  

CINS asked the Nis Clinical Center CEO Zoran Radovanovic for a comment but got no reply.   Crisis Staff member epidemiologist Branislav Tiodorovic confirmed that there might have been more coronavirus-related deaths than officially reported. “People die in an epidemic and they might not be confirmed or have laboratory test results or the laboratory might even have said they were negative but once you look at all the circumstances you can say that more people died,” he said, adding that the official count includes only those patients whose doctors said their deaths were the direct result of coronavirus infection.  

Epidemiologist Zoran Radovanovic said that the official count does not include all coronavirus-related deaths. “We tested few people and many died without a diagnosis because we didn’t have the tests,” he said. CINS also asked the Health Care Ministry and national Public Health Institute for comments about the number of deaths but received no answer.