No idea Whey_Aye
All we know is he went in to the hospital with the asthma attack, his daugther (my cousin) spent the evening with him settling him in, she commented to the ward nursing staff about the other patient's coughing and the potential for cross contamination (she works as a physio for the NHS), nothing was done about it all night.
The next day the other patient was wheeled off and two days later both my cousin and her dad were diagnosed with COVID. She's still under the two weeks self-isolation regieme having spent a couple of days laid out with it. She can't even claim his body from the mortuary and if she's not well enough she wont even be able to attend his funeral.
As Crowbag said, people are dying with cancer all the time and he would have died of his emphysema / fluid on his lungs / heart at some point but from what I've been told his certificate states that he died with "COVID related symptoms" which is what will be recorded on the official stats, despite the fact that he was a lifelong smoker.