Health authorities have added more than 300 deaths to the state’s COVID-19 toll following a review of data from Births, Deaths and Marriages, including 66 people who died from the virus in the home.
The 331 previously unreported deaths, which were certified by a doctor on the person’s death certificate as being caused by or contributed to by COVID-19, were added on Thursday.
More than 100 of the previously unreported deaths were from south-west Sydney.Credit:Peter Rae
NSW has now recorded 2433 deaths from COVID-19, including two – a man in his 50s from western NSW and a man in his 70s from the Central Coast, both with significant underlying health conditions – reported on Friday.
Of the previously unreported deaths, 270 occurred this year, 58 in 2021 and three were deaths from 2020, in the first year of the pandemic.
There were 131 previously unreported deaths in aged care facilities (39.6 per cent of the missing deaths). Another 98 (29.6 per cent) occurred in public hospitals, 66 (19.9 per cent) occurred at the person’s home and 22 (6.6 per cent) occurred in private hospitals.
“COVID-19 related deaths are notified to NSW Health from a range of sources, including public and private hospitals, aged care facilities, and the Coroner,” the ministry said in a statement, noting it was “usually” automatically notified when a death from COVID-19 occurred in a public hospital.
“To ensure NSW COVID-19 mortality data is as robust as possible, NSW Health has been cross-checking these deaths with all those identified in death certificates by the NSW Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages during this period.”
The deaths followed a similar geographic distribution to those authorities were already aware of. Thirty per cent – 102 deaths – occurred in South Western Sydney Local Health District, where about a quarter of the state’s virus deaths have been recorded.
In a report released by NSW Health on Thursday providing further information about the previously unreported deaths, the ministry said processes had been put in place such that deaths certified by a doctor as caused by COVID-19 would now be included in its figures.
“For people where an expected death occurred at home, for example an elderly person with significant underlying health conditions or people receiving palliative care, the doctor may not have reported the death through any channels other than the [registry],” the report stated.
“As many of the deaths occurred recently, and there is sometimes a delay between a death occurring and it being reported to NSW Health, it is possible that NSW Health would have received a report of the death through the usual channels, but at a later date.”
NSW Health was aware of a positive test result for 256 of the 331 deaths, but did not receive a report of death. It did not have a record of a positive test result for the remaining 75.
The report said health authorities “do not yet know the details of why” the additional deaths in hospitals and aged care facilities had not been reported.
“It is known that some infections may have been identified by a rapid antigen test that was not registered with Service NSW and some may have had a diagnosis based on testing performed outside of NSW, or based on a clinical diagnosis without a laboratory test,” the report read.
“In some cases, it is possible the facilities may have assumed the death was already reported by another authority. Some deaths were associated with other significant conditions such as end-stage cancer or significant neurological conditions.”
NSW Health also plans to use excess mortality data over the pandemic to further assess the impact of the virus on the community.
There were 25,495 new local COVID-19 cases reported in NSW on Friday. The number of people in hospital who are COVID-positive is trending up: there are 1345 cases admitted to hospital including 43 in intensive care.
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2022-04-01 00:36:56Z
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