Unclear if child died from Covid-19

It was widely reported on Monday that there has been another child Covid-19 death after the Ministry of Health released its weekly update – but it’s not clear if this child died because of the virus.

The ministry reported that in the last week, 40 people died with Covid-19: 28 of these deaths were attributed to Covid-19, either as the underlying cause or a contributory cause. One death was classed as not caused by Covid-19, and 11 were not yet categorised.

Of the deaths, one of them was a child under 10-years old.

According to the Ministry of Health’s website (as of yesterday), one Covid death has been recorded in the 0 to 9 years age group (since the pandemic started). In total Covid has contributed to the death of, or killed 2182 people in New Zealand.

As of November 13, 11.59pm, there was one death in the 0-9 age group. It was the same on Monday.

So, from the publicly available data, we can assume that the child’s death reported on Monday has not been officially confirmed as being caused by Covid.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that their death wasn’t caused by Covid-19. They could have been one of the 11 deaths that are not yet categorised, and could later be determined to be caused by Covid-19.

But they could also be the one case that has been determined not to be caused by Covid-19.

To put it simply, we just don’t know yet whether a child under 10 died because of Covid-19 in the last week, or if they died of a different cause while they had Covid-19.