First Welsh under-14 Covid death
A YOUNG girl has died with Covid, making her the first person under the age of 14 in Wales to have lost their life while suffering from the disease.
According to ONS data supplied to Public Health Wales, Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate of a girl aged between one and 14 who died in the week between September 10 and September 17.
There are no more details about the girl and whether she was suffering any other health conditions or whether Covid-19 was the underlying cause of death or not.
Data published by the ONS for England and Wales for the same week, ending September 17, show that there was only one death of a female under 19 registered that week, in the one to 14-yearold age group.
She is the second child to have died with Covid-19 in Wales since the pandemic began after a teen over the age of 14 died earlier in the pandemic.
A Public Health Wales spokesperson said: “We have reported the death of a child aged between one and 14 years in our analysis of ONS Covid-19 data. This is not the first death of a child related to coronavirus in Wales, as we have previously reported the death of a child over the age of 14 in an earlier period as part of our reporting in the 15-44 age range.
“We will not provide any further details relating to these individuals, and we would ask that the privacy of families is respected. Public Health Wales offers our condolences to all those affected by loss resulting from coronavirus.”
Lauren Jones, 25, from Tonypandy was one of the youngest people to have died with Covid in Wales just five days after Christmas last year. She and her parents Paul and Karen all caught the disease over the festive period and wrote off Christmas Day itself, hoping to celebrate the week after. But Lauren died before the new year, leaving her parents heartbroken and shocked. At the time they said: “We haven’t heard of anyone younger dying with Covid – it’s certainly not a statistic I wanted to be.”
The latest figures are based on ONS data and reported by PHW on a weekly basis. In turn, the ONS data on mortality statistics for England and Wales is driven by information collected from the death certificate at death registration.
ONS data showed that more than 8,000 people had died with Covid in Wales up to September 1. With 8,002 deaths recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, the data showed a sharp drop in the number of daily deaths in the third wave so far.