Northern Ireland

Care home deaths not included in daily Covid-19 figure

First Minister Arlene Foster, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill and Chief Constable Simon Byrne at the daily coronavirus briefing 
First Minister Arlene Foster, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill and Chief Constable Simon Byrne at the daily coronavirus briefing  First Minister Arlene Foster, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill and Chief Constable Simon Byrne at the daily coronavirus briefing 

THE issue of deaths in care homes, which are not included in the Covid-19 statistics, is to be discussed at the Stormont executive meeting today amid concerns they may be masking the true scale of the coronavirus crisis in Northern Ireland.

Commenting yesterday on the fact that figures issued by the Public Health Agency only cover deaths in hospital settings, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said: "It is fair to say given how stats are being recorded now, the number of deaths recorded probably doesn't reflect all the people who have died with Covid-19.

"That is being looked at now and we hope to have a fuller picture over the days ahead."

Speaking at Stormont's daily briefing, she said: "There has to be a particular emphasise on care homes ... when you look at examples across the world of catastrophic instances, huge numbers of people have lost their lives if you don't go in and tackle clusters.

"So we have raised that with the health minister, we will discuss that again at the executive meeting.

Read More: Coronavirus death toll likely higher than official figure

"There has to be a focused attention on care homes, because that's where we've seen clusters can happened and you need to get to grips with that very quickly," she added.

First minister Arlene Foster said: "I understand that we are still only registering deaths in hospital in connection with Covid-19. Most people who pass away from Covid-19 as I understand it are taken to hospital and are either on a ventilator or in intensive care before they pass away.

"That's what I understand the situation to be and that's what the chief medical officer has said."

Earlier this week The Irish News reported that contact tracing and testing was still not taking place, even when frontline staff had been found to be suffering from Covid-19.

A paramedic who tested positive for coronavirus just hours after treating a patient hit out at the absence of contact tracing.

Ms O'Neill said: "There needs to bee more testing. The World Health Organization is very clear in saying testing, tracing and isolating are the three things when run together are the key component to being successful in the battle against Covid-19."

Mrs Foster added: "In relation to testing we've all been very clear that we want to see more testing happening. It's about the capability, it is around making sure that we have the capacity to process those tests, to have the appropriate agents to do that as well.

"But we've all been very clear, we have a testing strategy which the health minister brought to the executive last week and that is a live document that keeps getting updated and we expect that to be updated again early next week."