By Charlotte Webster-
No critical examination of how close to death patients who had other commordities were before their demise, The Eye Of Media.Com can reveal.
As the year draws to a close and a Covid inquiry was published in November, stating that the government did too little too late., and lockdowns could have been prevented had there been adequate preparation, this publication can confirm that there currently exists no study assessing just how close to death patients with pre-existing illnesses were before they contracted Covid-19, which reportedly killed them in the end.
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During the global COVID-19 pandemic, a repeated public narrative claimed that many individuals who died after contracting the virus had severe pre-existing illnesses and were already close to death for other reasons. However, despite the frequent use of this narrative, there was a surprising lack of decentralised, public-health-level analysis examining how long before death these patients contracted SARS-CoV-2.
In other words, researchers and public health agencies did not systematically investigate whether these individuals were in the final weeks of life regardless of infection or whether the virus substantially shortened their expected survival.
This gap in analysis has significant implications for public understanding, policy development, risk communication, and the evaluation of the pandemic’s real impact on mortality.
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One of the central issues is the absence of detailed, time-specific data regarding when high-risk individuals contracted COVID-19 relative to their eventual death. Publicly available statistics rarely provide a chronological breakdown of infection in relation to the progression of other illnesses.
National health authorities documented deaths linked to COVID-19, and death certificates often listed coexisting health conditions. However, they did not typically offer any timeline showing whether these commorbid patients were already experiencing severe deterioration before infection or whether their pre-existing conditions were stable until COVID-19 caused a sudden decline.
For example, the United Kingdom’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that among the 50,335 COVID-related deaths recorded between March and June 2020 in England and Wales, 91.1 percent of decedents had at least one pre-existing condition. However, this information does not specify whether these individuals had been expected to live weeks, months, or years had they not contracted the virus. Office for National Statistics+1
Similarly, the UK Health Security Agency acknowledged in a technical summary that their classification system for COVID-19 deaths—which counted deaths within a 28- or 60-day window after a positive test—was not designed to provide definitive information about how pre-existing illnesses interacted with the virus in each case.
Their methodology did not allow for determining the extent to which COVID-19 influenced the timing of death among individuals with chronic illnesses.
Even the agencies responsible for monitoring the pandemic recognised that their systems did not fully disentangle the role of the virus from the natural progression of other conditions.
What Clinical and Autopsy Studies Reveal—And Why They Are Not Enough
Although large-scale public-health data is limited, clinical research and autopsy studies provide useful but incomplete insight. These studies typically show that while pre-existing conditions were common among people who died with COVID-19, the virus itself caused or accelerated terminal organ failure in a substantial proportion of cases.
A detailed autopsy series conducted at Charité Hospital in Germany examined 26 individuals who died after confirmed COVID-19 infection. PubMed Central+1
The researchers found that the median time from the onset of symptoms to death was approximately 25 days, with cases ranging from five days to nearly two months. Septic shock and multi –organ failure were the most common causes of death. Many of these patients had comorbidities such as hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and obesity. Nonetheless, the autopsy findings indicated that the immediate causes of death were predominantly linked to COVID-19.
These causes included septic shock, multiple organ failure, extensive lung damage, and secondary infections. This suggests that for the majority of these patients, COVID-19 played a direct and decisive role in their deaths rather than acting as a minor aggravating factor in an already terminal decline.
Another international study focusing on severely ill COVID-19 patients in intensive care units found that the median time from ICU admission to death was around 15 days. This indicates that once the disease became critical, patients typically deteriorated rapidly rather than dying as part of a prolonged decline associated primarily with their pre-existing conditions. PubMed
Interestingly, a study conducted in Ethiopia and published in the Annals of Medicine and Surgery found that COVID-19 patients with one or two comorbidities had a median survival time of approximately 12 days after hospital admission. Patients with three or more comorbidities survived slightly longer, with a median of about 15 days. This counterintuitive finding suggests that having multiple pre-existing illnesses did not necessarily lead to faster death once patients were hospitalised with COVID-19.
This challenges the assumption that those with numerous chronic conditions were always on the brink of death before their infection.
While these clinical studies offer valuable insights, they are limited by small sample sizes, specific hospital settings, and the absence of population-level data. They cannot fully answer the question of how far into their disease trajectories patients with chronic illnesses were before becoming infected with COVID-19.
Why a Decentralised, Public-Health Analysis Is Critically Important
The absence of broad, decentralised analysis into infection-to-death timing among people with pre-existing illnesses is more than a technical data oversight. It significantly affects how societies interpret mortality statistics, understand risk, and prepare for future health crises.
With the impact on public perception and political accountability, Statements suggesting that COVID-19 deaths mainly occurred among individuals who were already close to death have had significant political and social influence.
Without rigorous data, such claims remain speculative. If these statements are incorrect or exaggerated, they risk minimising the severity of the pandemic and undermining support for essential public-health interventions. Comprehensive decentralised data would help ensure that governments and institutions remain accountable for accurately representing the impact of COVID-19.
Understanding whether high-risk individuals contracted the virus early or late in their illness trajectory would meaningfully change how policymakers approach protection strategies. If infections occurred primarily in people who were already near the end of life, then policies might have focused more on palliative-care settings. It may also have established the fact that the virus was not the main cause of their death.
If, however, infections frequently happened among individuals whose chronic conditions were stable or only moderately advanced, then stronger measures such as improved shielding strategies, prioritised vaccination, enhanced infection control, and earlier clinical intervention would be justified.
Public health analysts use metrics such as “Years of Life Lost” (YLL) to estimate the burden of disease on a population. If many individuals with pre-existing illnesses were indeed close to death before contracting COVID-19, then the YLL attributed to the virus would be lower. Conversely, if COVID-19 substantially shortened the lives of individuals who otherwise had years of expected survival, then the YLL would be higher.
Without decentralised analysis linking clinical histories with infection timelines, attempts to calculate YLL are prone to significant error. Such inaccuracies affect long-term planning, resource allocation, and comparative analysis between COVID-19 and other health threats.
Although it has often been argued that many COVID-19 victims were already near death due to pre-existing illnesses, there remains a significant lack of decentralised, population-level research examining how near the end of life these individuals were when they contracted the virus. The clinical evidence that does exist suggests that COVID-19 frequently acted as a direct cause of rapid decline and death, even among those with chronic health conditions.
COVID-19 was therefore not simply a minor factor in an otherwise inevitable outcome for many patients, but a decisive and acute contributor to mortality.
This knowledge is not merely relevant to scientific understanding; it plays a critical role in shaping ethical, political, and public-health decisions both during and after future global health crises.
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