45% of COVID Deaths Not Due to COVID

New Retrospective Study of Athens Hospitals

In an observational study published Monday, researchers in Greece looked at archival data from seven hospitals in Athens during Omicron.

They counted all in-hospital, officially registered COVID-19 deaths between January 1st and August 31st, 2022. This yielded a total of 530 deaths.

Researchers used three data sources to assess each death:

1. the death certificate registered by the hospital as a COVID-19 death

2. the patient's chart

3. a questionnaire of the caring physician

Independent physicians with experience treating more than 2,500 COVID-19 patients then reviewed the data.

Upon close inspection of the 530 deaths, the researchers determined that:

• 240 were caused by factors other than COVID-19.

• 133 were due to COVID-19.

• For the remaining 157 patients, COVID-19 was determined to be a contributing but not primary cause of death.

Notably, of those 530 deaths, 518 patients had not previously been infected with SARS-Cov-2.

Also, of the 288 patients who died due to COVID, 155 had been fully vaccinated, 102 of whom had received more than two booster shots.

On another interesting note, 108 of the patients acquired SARS-Cov-2 in the hospital.

Many thanks to the researchers for their work in conducting this study, to Scientific Reports for making it free to the public, and to the 530 anonymous patients

References

Basoulis, D., Logioti, K., Papaodyssea, I. et al. Deaths “due to” COVID-19 and deaths “with” COVID-19 during the Omicron variant surge, among hospitalized patients in seven tertiary-care hospitals, Athens, Greece. Sci Rep 15, 13728 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-025-98834-y