Belgian officials say they are counting in a way that no other country in the world is currently doing: counting deaths in hospitals and care homes, but including deaths in care homes that are suspected, not confirmed, as Covid-19 cases.
According to Belgium's latest official figures, out of 7,703 deaths, 53% have been in care homes.
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More than three-quarters of deaths in care homes (77%) are suspected cases, leading to complaints that Belgium is over-counting coronavirus deaths. Belgium’s crisis centre, which collates the data, counters that its approach is more transparent.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52491210
Of Belgium’s registered deaths, 44 percent died in hospital (and were tested). The majority 54 percent died in a nursing home — and only in 7.8 percent of those cases was COVID-19 confirmed as the cause.
“We choose to register every death who had potentially died from COVID-19 to detect in which nursing homes the virus had hit. We were aware this would lead to an overestimation but found the signaling more important.”
Not everyone is on board with the catch-all approach. Belgian virologist Marc Van Ranst called it “stupid” to register so many people as dying from the coronavirus.
The ranking also agitated politicians. “If it’s important to be as transparent as possible, you have to get your numbers right,” Prime Minister Sophie Wilmès said in the Belgian parliament, adding that not all residents of nursing homes died because of the coronavirus. “You understand that this elevates our numbers.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/why-is-belgiums-death-toll-so-high/