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The Southern District Board of Health is investigating how an Invercargill man known to have Covid-19 died at home earlier this year in what is New Zealand’s only death from the disease outside of a hospital to date.
Alister Peter Brookland, known as Barney, died at his Kingswell home on April 14, aged 70, the 12th New Zealander to die from Covid-19.
At the time, Brookland was linked to Bluff’s wedding group, which had 98 cases connected before it was closed, including the death of the groom’s father.
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Authorities announced today that last week’s death was due to the virus. They also announced nine new cases of coronavirus. Source: 1 NEWS
Chief Health Officer Dr. Ashley Bloomfield said that at the time, while Brookland had been diagnosed with Covid-19, he was not “clinically ill” prior to his death.
Bloomfield said it took several days to link the case to Covid-19 because “the circumstances surrounding that person’s death were such that we felt it was important to get a good understanding.”
“That can help inform our knowledge base on how we manage people in the community with Covid-19, particularly if they have pre-existing respiratory conditions.”
When asked if Brookland should have been in the hospital, Bloomfield said the case would be reviewed to “see what the learnings are.”
Brookland’s death was one of 66 serious adverse events reported by the SDHB for 2019-20. SDHB Medical Director Dr. Nigel Millar said his death was recorded as such because it was unexpected.
“At the time of this tragic death, we were still in the early stages of learning about this disease,” Millar said in a statement.
“We need to take advantage of our response to Covid-19 and learn from it, and since the death was unexpected, it was recorded as an adverse event to make sure we know as much as we can about what happened.
“Finding out how it happened will help us understand if it was avoidable and if there are things we could do in the future to prevent a similar event.”
According to DHB’s 2019/20 Adverse Reaction Report, the investigative report is still in the draft phase.
