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Not all Covid-19 deaths are reported as required by law, the Dublin coroner warned.
As a result, Dr. Myra Cullinane has written to medical personnel in hospitals and elsewhere that they are responsible for completing death certificates saying that they must meet the requirement to report “any proven or suspected Covid-19 death” to his office.
His warning comes amid concerns over possible underreporting of deaths from the virus, particularly outside hospitals. Analysis of online death warnings in recent weeks has suggested a level of excess mortality that is not listed in official figures.
Separately, RTÉ News reported Wednesday night that nine residents at the Maryborough Center, St. Fintan Hospital, Portlaoise, Co Laois, died over the holiday weekend. Eight of the residents of the psychiatric center, aged between 66 and 84 years, had tested positive for Covid-19. The remaining 17 residents are being handled as if they had the virus, the HSE said.
Health workers
Two health workers at San Lucas General Hospital in Co Kilkenny died of Covid-19 within 24 hours.
A woman in her fifties and a man in her forties were working at the hospital when they became ill. A spokeswoman for the Eastern Ireland Hospital Group, which runs St. Luke’s, confirmed the deaths and said the group was “deeply saddened” by what had happened.
“We send our condolences to their families, friends and colleagues,” he said.
In her letter, Dr. Cullinane reminds medical staff of the requirement of forensic laws to report deaths from viruses. She adds: “It has struck me that such reports do not take place in all cases.”
“I have excellent compliance experience to date and am aware that this is an extremely difficult time for front-line medical personnel, however, full compliance with reporting to the coroner is essential as it provides essential information to health authorities public “.
When asked Wednesday night if he was aware of the problems with the failure to report Covid-19 deaths, the medical director, Dr. Tony Holohan, said he was not “but I’m not saying no there are cuts or other problems in the reporting system
“We are trying to dig deeper into that so we can unleash any challenges that may be, so that we can get good real-time information on mortality.
The Forensic Physicians Service has advised that deceased patients with respiratory failure and Covid-19 suspects undergo a swab test so that positive cases can be reported. The death of 38 other patients was announced by the National Public Health Emergency Team on Wednesday night, the second-highest daily total so far.
There have now been 444 confirmed Covid-19 related deaths in the Republic. The recently reported deaths include that of a 23-year-old person, the youngest person with Covid-19 to die during the current outbreak.
On Wednesday Irish laboratories reported some 657 new cases of the disease and 411 processed them in a German laboratory. The new cases, the highest daily total so far, brings the total number of confirmed cases to 12,547. Dr. Holohan said the increase in cases in the past few days was more likely to be related to an increase in testing than to a change in the underlying pattern of the disease.
Encouragingly, the number of patients admitted to intensive care fell for the second day to 158, within the system’s capacity to treat seriously ill patients.
Some 290 deaths of the 444 deaths were associated with residential settings, including 245 in nursing homes. Dr. Holohan admitted that the nursing home and other residential sectors continued to pose a challenge.
Priority area
He said these sectors were now a priority area for Irish public health officials. In defense of the emergency team’s response to nursing home outbreaks, he said work had been ongoing for many weeks to prepare before cases occurred here and the response had intensified as challenges were identified.
Northern Ireland on Wednesday extended its Covid-19 restrictions for another three weeks.
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