Coronavirus: Ministry stops mentioning underlying health condition of fatalities

The health ministry appears to no longer be informing the public as to whether people who have died from Covid-19 also suffered from underlying health conditions.

For the past two days, in their daily announcement, the health ministry has omitted the information as regards underlying health conditions – in an apparent break from their previous format.

So far, the health ministry has not officially commented on the apparent change and was not immediately available for comment throughout Monday.

But on Monday afternoon, AlphaNews published an interview with sociologist Constantinos Fellas – who is a recent appointment to the government’s coronavirus advisory team – saying: “For the first time yesterday [Sunday] in the announcement of the deaths, the underlying health conditions were not mentioned.”

“They [the people who died] were simply our fellow citizens who died from coronavirus.”

The reasoning appears to be that some within the public may not have taken Covid-19 deaths as seriously when it was mentioned that those who passed away also suffered from underlying health conditions.

Fellas further reasoned that this took away from the respect which should be shown to the people who died and their families.

It appears that members of the advisory team are concerned that reporting on the underlying health conditions may have inadvertently led some people to not follow the restrictions.

Others have raised concerns however that the public has a right to be accurately informed and that such information should not be withheld.