Dr. Scott Jensen, a Minnesota physician and Republican state senator said he received a 7-page document coaching him to fill out death certificates with a COVID-19 diagnosis without a lab test to confirm the patient actually had the virus.
“Last Friday I received a 7-page document that told me if I had an 86-year-old patient that had pneumonia but was never tested for COVID-19 but some time after she came down with pneumonia we learned that she had been exposed to her son who had no symptoms but later on was identified with COVID-19, then it would be appropriate to diagnose on the death certificate COVID-19,” Dr. Scott Jensen said.
Dr. Jensen explained that this is not a normal procedure.
Dr.. Jensen said for example if the same patient had pneumonia during flu season and he didn’t have a test confirming the patient also had influenza, he would never diagnose the patient with influenza on the death certificate.
WATCH:
SHOCKING: MN Sen & Dr. @drscottjensen said that he received a 7 pg doc from @mnhealth to fill out death certificates with a diagnosis of #COVID-19 whether the person actually died from COVID-19 or not.
Why is #MN inflating COVID-19 death numbers? pic.twitter.com/llvHDoIMGH
— Chris Berg (@chrisbergPOVNOW) April 8, 2020
The Gateway Pundit has a copy of the HHS letter sent out to doctors across the country on counting COVID-19 victims.
The document is here.
US HHS Document to Doctors … by Jim Hoft on Scribd
As TGP reported over the weekend, the amount of Americans who are reported to have died from the Coronavirus is based on a CDC coding system that will “result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”
Dr. Birx confirmed this on Tuesday during a COVID-19 task force briefing.
A new ICD code was established to keep track of Coronavirus deaths.
The U07.1 code will be used for death by Coronavirus infection.
However, there’s another secondary code, U07.2, “for clinical or epidemiological diagnosis of COVID-19 where a laboratory confirmation is inconclusive or not available,” the CDC guidelines read.
“The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate. However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID- 19 being the underlying cause more often than not,” the guidelines read.
Dr. Birx on Tuesday told a reporter during a Coronavirus task force briefing, “We’ve taken a very liberal approach to mortality.”
“Can you talk about your concerns about deaths being misreported by Coronavirus because of either testing or standards for how they are characterized?” the reporter asked Birx.
“If someone dies with COVID-19, we are counting that as a COVID-19 death,” Birx said.
There is a big difference between dying with the virus and from the virus.