Just under 90% of people whose deaths have been listed as ‘Covid related’ had some sort of underlying condition, figures published on Thursday show.
The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency report on ‘pre‑existing conditions associated with Covid-19 related deaths in Northern Ireland’ states that between March 1 2020 and September 30 2021, there were 3,462 ‘Covid-19 related deaths’ registered in Northern Ireland.
Covid-19, the Agency says, “was the underlying cause of death (that is, the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death) for 3,007 deaths (86.9% of Covid‑19 related deaths)”.
NISRA says that pre-existing conditions are defined as ‘any mention on the death certificate of a condition that pre‑dated or was independent of Covid-19’.
The report adds: “There were no pre-existing conditions for 311 of the 3,007 Covid-19 deaths (10.3%). On average, there were 2.50 pre-existing conditions per Covid-19 death.”
The research found that dementia and Alzheimer’s disease was the most common pre-existing condition, appearing in 767 of the 3,007 Covid-19 deaths (25.5%). The next most common pre-existing conditions were hypertensive diseases (635) and diabetes (632 deaths).
During October and November 2021, a further 423 Covid-19 related deaths were registered, however, NISRA says that at the minute “there is insufficient information to identify the number and type of pre-existing conditions over this two-month period”.
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