“People attribute the cause of death to something like a heart attack or a pulmonary embolism, which is a blood clot that goes to the lungs, that are actually complications of an underlying infectious disease,” he said. “In COVID, for example, people may have pre-existing heart disease, may die of a heart attack or heart arrhythmias, and there’s a risk, particularly if they didn’t get tested for COVID, that their death could be misattributed.”