COVID-19 deaths of patients with a learning disability notified to LeDeR

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Following the expiration of the Control of patient information notice issued by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care which had provided a legal basis for the sharing of confidential patient information in order to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, NHS England will no longer receive the COVID-19 status of individuals other than in the course of carrying out LeDeR reviews. NHS England will therefore no longer publish the notifications of deaths to the programme. We will however publish aggregated data in the LeDeR annual report.

The documents below show the number of deaths reported to the LeDeR programme by date of death where the person notifying the death or the person reviewing the death has indicated that COVID-19 is suspected or confirmed as the cause of death. Anyone can notify a death to the programme – a family member, a carer, a friend as well as a clinician who may or may not have given direct clinical care to the person who has died. When the notifier or reviewer suspects that COVID was involved in the person’s death, that may be their own opinion and there may be no COVID-19 test or death certificate to evidence this.

Please note this data has not been checked against death certificates.

Following publication of the LeDeR COVID-19 weekly deaths as at 19 November 2021, a data quality issue was identified which has resulted in the numbers of deaths of people with a learning disability being “over reported” in some weeks. Between the start of the programme and 1st October 2021 it is estimated that around 185 deaths were “over reported”, 45 of which were notified as due to suspected or confirmed COVID-19.

This was due to the inclusion of some deaths that were later found to have been reported, and therefore counted, more than once and other deaths that were found to have been out of scope of the LeDeR programme (e.g. because the person who died was later found not have had a learning disability or did not live in England). The easy read and plain English publications from 31 January 2022 onwards contain the revised figures.

Summary

Data published on the 24 September 2021 contained an error: the last two weeks’ figures were not included in the totals. The current files now contain the correct figures. We apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused.

Summary

Data published on the 24 September 2021 contained an error: the last two weeks’ figures were not included in the totals. The current files now contain the correct figures. We apologise for any inconvenience this might have caused.

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LeDeR COVID-19 daily deaths

LeDeR COVID-19 daily deaths

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