Robin Swann 'committed to COVID-19 transparency' a week-and-a-half since last figure for Derry reported

At the start of last week reporting of COVID-19 cases in the north passed from the Public Health Agency, which had been providing updates on cases by Council district, to the Department of Health, which vowed to continue this practice with a new daily coronavirus dashboard.

However, following a reporting error the dashboard was pulled after just one day and since Sunday, April 19, when there were 15 reported deaths and 124 reported cases in Derry and Strabane there has been no update on how many cases there are in the city and district.

Instead the Department of Health has been publishing a daily COVID-19 update, which only includes figures for the north as a whole.

The Northern Ireland Research and Statistics Agency (NISRA) also publishes a weekly bulletin of registered deaths that includes COVID-19 deaths each Friday.

But the figures, due to the nature of death registrations, are a week old and do not provide a geographical breakdown.

By contrast the authorities in the south have been providing a daily breakdown by county - albeit with a two day time lag - for over a month now.

The latest data published by the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in Dublin on Wednesday night, for example, show that as of midnight on Monday, April 27, there were 454 cases in Donegal.

Worryingly, the latest data show that in the border counties of Cavan (634 cases - 3.2% of the total in the south) and Monaghan (388 - 2%) there are high per capita positive cases of coronavirus. That's in spite of Monaghan being the last county in Ireland to report a positive case.

Mr. Swann, referring to transparency of reporting in the north, said: “I want to continue seeing the maximum possible transparency on this issue.

“I want to explore with NISRA if it is possible for it to report more frequently than once a week on deaths associated with COVID-19 across hospitals and the community.

“This is not straightforward and I want to thank all those who are working hard in this area to provide up to date and reliable statistics.”

The Minister explained that the Department of Health published a daily total of all deaths recorded by health Trusts where there had been a laboratory confirmed positive COVID-19 test within 28 days of death.

These, he said, will have been mainly but not solely hospital deaths. Analysis of the setting of death for this daily total now indicates in the region of 25% occurred in care homes.

Mr. Swann said the daily reporting was never intended to be a complete record of all deaths associated with COVID-19.

He said it provides "a real time indicator of progression of the spread of the virus and the seriousness of its impact. Its primary use is for surveillance and tracking; but publication also acknowledges the public interest in these figures".

Mr. Swann said the weekly NISRA bulletin details where COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, including in combination with other health conditions.

It is clear that there will be some overlap between the community deaths included in the published daily figures and the weekly NISRA bulletin.

“I fully accept this is complicated. Statistics help us to track the virus and keep the public informed. But the well-established process for death registration was not designed for use in a pandemic of this nature.” the Minister added.

“It also has to be stressed that there is a time lag associated with completion of registration of deaths in the community. It can take a number of days for the necessary documentation to be completed and fully registered. So this makes it very challenging if not impossible to provide daily reports that are fully up to date.

“I am committed to doing all I can to get as much information into the public domain as possible.”