DEATH VERIFICATION

There is nothing in English Law to require a death to be verified by a doctor, nor for the body of the deceased to be examined by a doctor, nor is there a contractual obligation to do these things. GPs should avoid verifying in person the death of patients who may be infected with coronavirus. Such deaths may be verified by other persons who are with the deceased at the time, by emergency services who are in attendance, or by the funeral director.

DEATH CERTIFICATION

The coronial service will be under unprecedented strain during this pandemic and for workload reasons but also infection control reasons, post-mortems are being avoided unless absolutely necessary. The coronial advice, which we support, is that wherever possible every effort should be made to give the most likely cause of death.

Also, GPs do not need to report COVID-19 deaths to the coroner as despite being a notifiable disease, it is not a reportable disease. You should report the case to PHE in the usual way.

In addition to the above, the new Coronavirus Act 2020 2, 3 has now passed into law, and the appropriate regulations have been triggered by the General Register Officer, which makes the following changes to the process:

• Any doctor may complete a medical certificate of cause of death so long as they are able to give a cause of death to the best of their knowledge
• Relaxation of the 14-day requirement so that the deceased need only be seen by any doctor (not just the certifying doctor) in the preceding 28 days
• If a doctor has seen the patient in the preceding 28 days by video link, the patient is considered to have been "seen" as if they had been seen face to face.