In 2020, the World Health Organisation published international guidelines for the certification and coding of COVID-19 as a cause of death.

The definition of a death due to COVID-19, based on these guidelines, is as follows:

“a death resulting from an illness compatible with COVID-19, (based on laboratory confirmation OR on clinical features only)”

• The underlying cause of death of a person who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 (either on the basis of laboratory confirmation OR on clinical grounds alone) should be written as COVID-19, in Part 1 of the          medical certificate of cause of death, unless there is a clear alternative or unrelated supervening medical cause of death (such as trauma or pre-existing severe co-morbidity).
• If there is laboratory confirmation of the disease, then the certifier should record the cause of death as “Confirmed COVID-19". 
• But if the diagnosis was made on clinical grounds alone, the certifier should record the cause of death as “Suspected COVID-19".
It should be noted, where there are pre-existing controlled chronic conditions, these are recorded in Part 2.