One of the main criticisms in counting covid deaths is that any person who died and tested positive for covid was counted as a covid death, regardless of whether covid was the main cause of death.
This isn't the case for any country that I know of. Nearly every country uses the WHO standards for death certificates and related statistics, which can include multiple contributing factors toward death but only if they actually contributed.
So if someone is a heart patient, but they got COVID and their condition suddenly worsened, the death certificate might state the cause of death as heart failure from the existing condition with COVID as a contributing factor.
People who had COVID but died in completely unrelated ways, such as from car accidents, are not counted in COVID death statistics and don't have it listed as a contributory cause in their death certificates.
