A total of 92 people died from covid 19 alone in 2021 according to data released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The information arose from an individual query to the CSO seeking instances where Covid 19 was listed on a death cert as the cause of death where no other conditions or circumstances were mentioned.
The CSO has a record of 61 deaths in 2020 where Covid 19 is listed as the cause of death with no pre-existing conditions or contributory factors mentioned.
The CSO released the information coinciding with its 2021 Yearly Summary following a query from financial advisor Eddie Hobbs, an outspoken critic of vaccine passes.
It is a legal requirement that every death in Ireland must be recorded and registered with the General Register Office (GRO) and this information is supplied to the CSO.
The CSO says deaths must be registered as soon as possible after the death and no later than three months from the date of death.
The cause of death is supplied to the GRO on a Death Notification Form (DNF) which includes information on cause of death.
Ultimately, the cause of death is the medical opinion of the registered medical practitioner that fills out the death cert, according to CSO Statistician Gerard Doolan.
“If a person has terminal cancer for example and contracts COVID-19 and dies, it falls upon the medical practitioner to state on the death certificate the disease or injury which initiated the train of morbid events leading directly to death. The medical practitioner is the expert who determines whether it was the COVID-19 or terminal cancer which ultimately led to the individual’s death,” Mr Doolan said.
“If an individual contracts COVID-19, develops pneumonia and dies of lung or respiratory failure – it is the expert opinion of the medical practitioner as relayed to the CSO via the death certificate as to what initiated the train of morbid events leading to the death,” Mr Doolan said.
“We (The CSO) don’t go back and query medical opinion. The medical practitioners who complete the death certificates are the subject matter experts and we (the CSO) code as per the information they supply to us,” he said.
The Cause of Death is completed by the medical practitioner who attended the deceased and has the following information:
Part 1 (a): Disease or condition directly leading to death, (this does not mean the mode of dying e.g. heart failure etc., it means the disease that caused death) due to (or as consequence of)
Part 1 (b): Antecedent Causes (morbid conditions, if any, giving rise to the above cause stating the underlying condition last) due to (or as consequence of)
Part 1 (c): Further Antecedent Causes
Part 2: Other Significant Conditions (contributing to the death but not related to the disease or condition causing it)
Overall, in 2021 the CSO recorded 3,011 covid 19 deaths and these are listed as ‘covid 19 virus identified and virus unidentified.’
The figures are compiled based on the date of registration with the GRO, not date of death.
The same figure for 2020 is 1,672, giving a total figure of covid deaths to the end of December 2021 of 4,683.
However, on Saturday January 8 2022 RTÉ published a piece stating:
“In Ireland there have been over 5,950 Covid-19 deaths.”
A HSE press officer was unable to explain the discrepancy between RTÉ and CSO figures but did provide a link to a ‘note on death reporting’ under the HPSC’s Profile of Notified Deaths:
“For epidemiological purposes, HPSC reports on the number of deaths reported daily by the date of death, i.e. the number of deaths recorded by the date a person died. Other organisations and media outlets frequently report on the number of deaths daily by notification date i.e. the number of deaths that were reported to the CIDR database on a given day – irrespective of their date of death.
“*The number of deaths described above only reflects COVID-19 deaths on CIDR at the time of reporting and does not reflect the final number of deaths for this period. In Ireland, registration of a death can occur up to three months after the date of death, therefore the number of deaths reported with a date of death within the past 14 days is likely an underestimate.”
According to the government’s Geohive Data on Covid 19, as of June 1 2022 there have been a total of 7,381 covid deaths in Ireland, a figure that ‘includes probable and possible deaths.’
If the June 1 2022 figures are accurate, this mean that 2, 698 people have died with or of covid 19 this year despite persistent claims that covid vaccinations were 100% effective against hospitalisation and death throughout the vaccine roll out campaign.
Gript.ie asked the CSO to provide comparative numbers for deaths from covid, influenza and pneumonia for 2021.
The CSO determined that there were 3,011 deaths in 2021 where it (the CSO) assigned the Underlying Cause of Death (UCOD) as being covid. There was 1 death in 2021 where the CSO assigned the cause of death as being Influenza. There were 677 deaths in 2021 where the CSO assigned the cause of death Pneumonia.
Deaths where influenza was the cause of death dropped from 151 in 2018 to 51 in 2019. In 2020 it rose again to 99 before dropping back to one death in 2021, according to the CSO.
For pneumonia as the cause of death, the CSO figures show 1,084 deaths in 2018 dropping to 980 deaths in 2019, 792 deaths in 2020 and 677 in 2021.
Previously, in April 2021 Mayo Coroner Pat O’Connor raised questions about the accuracy of covid death figures.
“In reality, a lot of people have terminal cancer or multiple other serious co-morbidities. People can die from Covid and or with Covid. I think numbers that are recorded as Covid deaths may be inaccurate and do not have a scientific basis,” Mr O’Connor said.