What does it mean when they say there was another reason for the person’s death? How is it decided that the person died from COVID-19 or other disease, if there is no autopsy? In response to these questions during an interview with Azatutyun Radio, Minister of Health of Armenia Arsen Torosyan said the main cases are heart attack, stroke or other long chronic illness that would lead to the person’s death in any case, but the coronavirus was a posthumous diagnosis, without the clinical symptoms that characterize the virus.

“It’s not like there hasn’t been any autopsy at all. There have been forensic medicine autopsies. We are currently enhancing capacities to be able to have a morgue for infectious diseases so that we can conduct autopsy in any case. If an investigator decides that there has to be autopsy in any case, we will conduct autopsy, being certain that the personnel are protected from the virus,” he said.

When told that the Ministry of Health started distinguishing the deaths from COVID-19 and the deaths for other reasons only 1.5-2 months after maintaining the statistics and this is why people blame the Ministry of Health for using this tool to show low percentages of mortality, the minister said the following: “If the Ministry of Health used this tool, it could have presented other figures and even cheat the population. There have been 22 cases of death for other reasons to this day.”