Covid-19 ‘starts the train of death’ for 90% of patients who die with it

An in-depth report into the Province’s record-keeping when it comes to coronavirus indicates that the overwhelming bulk of people who died with Covid, died of Covid.

The findings from the NI Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) essentially seem to undermine an idea often cited by people who are sceptical of lockdowns – namely, that the official statistics over-represent the part the virus plays in killing people who were already sick.

It has often been said that the way statistics are calculated means that somebody could get a positive coronavirus test on Monday, get fatally hit by a bus on Tuesday, but would still be registered as a “Covid-related death”.

And whilst this would be technically true, the new seven-month snapshot from NISRA shows that for the great bulk of fatal coronavirus carriers, the virus “initiated the train” of their ultimate death.

Since the start of the outbreak there has been a divide between NISRA and the Department of Health, both of which collect fatality stats, but in different ways.

The department counts deaths “where the deceased had a positive test for Covid-19 and died within 28 days – whether or not Covid-19 was the cause of death”.

NISRA counts deaths “where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate by the doctor who certified the death, whether or not Covid-19 was the primary underlying cause of death”.

Critics have pointed out that neither measurement actually spells out precisely how many people were killed by the Covid-19 itself, and how many just happened to have it at the time of death.

As of December 18, NISRA had counted 1,674 Covid-related deaths.

Meanwhile the department has counted 1,240 such deaths to date.

What the latest report from NISRA shows is this:

> Between March and the beginning of October there were 902 Covid-19 related deaths recorded by NISRA;

> Covid-19 was the underlying cause of death (“that is, the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death”) for 807 deaths;

> That means Covid-19 was the underlying cause of death for 89.5% of the coronavirus-related deaths;

> Only 77 Covid-related deaths involved no pre-existing conditions (8.5% of the total);

> The average number of pre-existing conditions in fatal of people with Covid is 2.32;

> The main pre-existing condition found in people who died with Covid was dementia and Alzheimer’s disease (297, or 32.9% of the total);

> This was followed by ischaemic heart diseases – that is to say, those heart conditions caused by blocked arteries (81, or 9%), chronic lower respiratory diseases (67, or 7.4%) and diabetes (39, or 4.8%).

Other NISRA figures show the overall impact Covid-19 is having on mortality.

> For example, from January to the start of December in 2019, there were a total of 14,339 deaths registered in NI.

> For the same period in 2020, there were 15,958.