 Meantime, the Ministry of Health and Wellness has implemented a new method of classifying COVID-19 mortality in St. Lucia so as to ensure accountability and the dissemination of clear and accurate information during national, regional, and international reporting exercises. Hamadi Mark reports. From the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, St. Lucia, along with other countries, recorded COVID-19 deaths as anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 by PCR test at the time of their passing. A distinction is now being made between individuals who succumbed as a result of COVID-19 and COVID-19 related deaths which is defined as someone diagnosed with COVID-19 at the time of their passing but died due to other causative illnesses such as cancer or causes like trauma. If there is a period of complete recovery from COVID-19 prior to a person's demise, this will not be classified as a COVID-19 death. Dr. Michelle Fossoie, national epidemiologist in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, explained their approach taken by the ministry in undertaking this exercise. Devs that I described wouldn't be termed as COVID-related deaths. They were not the underlying cause of illness and what we had to do in terms of this classification, let me have St. Lucia to rest assure that the death certificates were not modified, nothing was changed at the Ministry of Health and Wellness. We do not sign death certificates. What we do is review the death certificates. Based on the chronology of events which the attendant physician had documented on the death certificates, we use this to determine whether it was a COVID death or a COVID-related death. For example, an individual in the cause of death on a death certificate, an individual who tests positive for COVID-19, may develop a pneumonia and that pneumonia may lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome and that would be classified as a COVID-19 death. Similarly, as I explained, an individual who, for example, has a heart attack, that would weaken the heart and cause some sort of heart failure and so this individual testing positive for COVID-19 and if you notice COVID-19 is written in part two and there are two parts to this death certificate. So that individual would not be classified as a COVID-19 death because his underlying illness was the heart attack and which led to heart failure and the resulting death. Dr. Foswa assures the public that death certificates were not modified during the exercise. The Ministry of Health and Wellness also conducted a thorough analysis of their database to rule out any inadequacies that may have been recorded. Anybody who manages a database would understand that databases need to be examined, they need to be cleaned. There may be duplicates and it is very easy to get duplicates in a database whereby persons may present using one, their driver's license for example and present at the hospital using their national ID card and we know on death certificate sometimes you know somebody by one name and they present with a totally different name later on. So all of these issues we had to address go through our database to ensure that the information that was there was reliable. The Ministry of Health and Wellness informed that as of July 12, 2021 a total of 5,410 cases have been diagnosed in country and a total of 50 COVID-19 deaths and 36 COVID-19 related deaths have been recorded. From the Government Information Service, Helmedi Mark reporting.