There is limited capacity to provide care for people. If people are without COVID dying because COVID cases are taking up that capacity, then COVID is a factor

There is limited capacity to provide care for people. If people are without COVID dying because COVID cases are taking up that capacity, then COVID is a factor in those deaths as well. One of the earliest fears about the spread of COVID was exactly this issue: too many cases would overwhelm the healthcare system and cause deaths to rise even more. Even if we couldn't stop the spread of the virus, one of the goals was to slow it down to keep the number of simultaneous cases to a minimum.