The World Health Organization has issued international instructions for certification and classification (coding) of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as cause of death. Central to these instructions is the selection of the underlying cause of death for a public health preventive purpose. This article focuses on two rules for this selection: (1) that a death due to COVID-19 should be counted independently of pre-existing conditions that are suspected of triggering a severe course of COVID-19 and (2) that COVID-19 should not be considered as due to anything else. The article argues that observance of the first rule may not always lead to an optimal selection from a preventive point of view and that in the future the ascertainment of an animal source of the coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) would make it possible to reconceptualize ‘COVID-19′ and create a zoonotic classification code by means of which a factor of a greater preventive value could be selected than what is currently possible.
【저자키워드】 COVID-19, prevention, underlying cause of death, Causal selection, 【초록키워드】 coronavirus disease, public health, SARS-CoV-2, coronavirus, zoonotic, International, death, World Health Organization, coding, triggering, Course, greater, selected, condition, 【제목키워드】 National,