The Scottish Government has outlined details of the improved process to report Covid-19 deaths which began today, Thursday 2 April 2020.
Health Protection Scotland (HPS) has worked with National Records of Scotland (NRS) to put the new, more efficient procedure in place, which involves cross-checking records between HPS and NRS to identify individuals who have died and have a laboratory confirmed report of Covid-19.
The new system no longer requires manual data returns from Health Protection Teams and will not be dependent upon separate confirmation that the next of kin have been informed of a link with Covid-19, given this is now incorporated within the death certification process.
This will reduce delays in reporting Covid-19 deaths.
As part of this new system, 40 deaths, which would not yet have been reported under the old system – because next of kin had not been informed – have been included and allocated to the last three days as appropriate. The announcement of the new system was made at today’s media briefing which you can watch below.
📺 Watch live: First Minister @NicolaSturgeon holds a press conference on coronavirus (#COVIDー19). https://t.co/WRxqficreF
— Scottish Government (@scotgov) April 2, 2020
The government explains that there is no change in the definition used to report deaths of Covid-19. This is an individual who has died, and has had a laboratory confirmed report of Covid-19 in the 28 days prior to death.
The table below shows the running total of the number of deaths reported, under the old and new systems, of those confirmed to have died from Coronavirus across the last few days.
There are now 126 deaths confirmed using the new system.
| HPS old data collation approach | HPS new approach using NRS records linked to laboratory data |
| Tuesday 31 March – 60 | Tuesday 31 March – 69 |
| Wednesday 1 April – 76 | Wednesday 1 April – 97 |
| Thursday 2 April – 86 | Thursday 2 April – 126 |
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