By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

THE COVID-19 death toll increased sharply yesterday to 46. Chief Medical Officer Dr Pearl McMillan explained that the increase was mainly due to officials now including “deaths under investigation” to the dashboard. Officials have also revealed errors in data on previous dashboards, which they have since cleaned up leading to a decrease in overall cases.

On Saturday, the COVID-19 dashboard reflected 29 deaths out of 1,765 cases.

Sunday’s data - which was not released until yesterday - showed 69 additional confirmed cases, which would have brought the total figure to 1,834, and that deaths had risen to 44.

However officials said Sunday’s true COVID-19 tally was 1,784 cases “after an ongoing data clean-up exercise which took effect last week” led to adjustments.

Meanwhile, yesterday’s data showed only 14 additional confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the total to 1,798, with 46 deaths.

Dr McMillan explained the rise in deaths. “That relates to us actually incorporating what we would call deaths under investigation into our dashboard. Before that, what we did was just report that were straight out COVID deaths or we were able to determine at the time of death that this death was actually caused by COVID-19. And we had the non COVID-related deaths that you would see just under that number on the dashboard.

“But we made the decision to begin to incorporate a total number of deaths which includes those deaths that we are actually reviewing to determine whether they will be a COVID-related death or a non COVID-related death. So that is what resulted in the, what seems precipitous increase in the number of deaths on our dashboard. So we are at 46 plus the five that are non COVID-related deaths.”

As the deaths have grown, so have the number of people admitted to hospital because of COVID-19.

Special advisor to the prime minister, Dr Merceline Dahl-Regis said 87 cases were now hospitalised.

Asked about it yesterday, Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis laid out his plan for a bed capacity increase in the public sector.

Dr Minnis said: “We have a strategic plan moving forward in that we would move the (hospital) boarders out, thus clearing all of those spaces and the plan was to move the boarders either (to) Poinciana Inn on Bernard Road or identify existing private sector facilities that care for individuals and that would allow us these extra spaces within the hospital.

“We’ve also identified spaces within the Breezes hotel and those non-COVID patients that are in the hospital they would be moved to Breezes thus freeing up the hospital itself and we’d be able to establish a COVID ward within the hospital and the non-COVID patients would be monitored at Breezes.”

Dr Minnis said as different aspects of the country’s COVID-19 response continued to work, he was certain the nation would overcome this bed shortage.

This came as The Tribune was told that beds had reached capacity with a waiting list now in place for treatment at a public health facility on the island.

For her part Dr Dahl-Regis said a management strategy had to be looked at because a lockdown would not change the requirement for hospitalisations, adding more beds were needed.

“We know that when we have peak cases you have a lag between the requirements for hospitalisations and you have a further lag with the documentation of deaths,” she said.

In terms of the errors on the previous dashboards, Dr Dahl-Regis said health officials are looking at digital data entry at the time of swabbing to eliminate paper records to correct this.

Officials also said yesterday the Public Hospitals Authority has 66 ventilators spread across New Providence and Grand Bahama, with ten currently under repair.