Since start of COVID-19 pandemic 15 children died

15 children have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began in March 2020 according to
statistcs from the Health Ministry. Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony said that most of those
who passed away had a range of co-morbidities.
“We continue to monitor and try to decipher what is causing the deaths. For some of those
children that would have been hospitalised, we know for sure some of the comorbidities that they
have had and the challenges, because some of them, the prognosis was poor with their
underlying diseases and then they got Covid, so that complicated the problem,” Minister
Anthony said on Monday.
Dr. Anthony disclosed that over the last few days, four children were reported to have died of
Covid. He admitted that his ministry is currently investigating those deaths. “We would have
seen the four deaths of children and this is something we will do some further investigation on,
because of the four, three of the children arrived at the hospital, they were dead before arrival to
the hospital,” he explained.
The health minister said, “Within the ministry we have a small committee of doctors who are
going to get those charts and review them more thoroughly and do some interviews with the
family of these children, so hopefully that will give us a better understanding of what is
happening.”
Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony has apologised to the family of a four-year-old child who died as a
result of Covid-19 in Mabaruma, Region One. He admitted that the case received public
attention, last week, when images of the child’s father lifting his body to the cemetery,
circulated on social media.
“This is not the standard procedure … once the child, or anybody is pronounced dead, they are in
the mortuary, and then there is an official hand over of the body to the family, in this case that
did happen,” Dr. Anthiny said.
He continued, “There is a vehicle that operates between the police and the ministry of health and
so somebody ought to have assisted the family in getting the body to the cemetery or to the site
of burial. There was some mix up between the staff of the ministry and the police, and therefore
this did not happen in a timely manner. They didn’t get the vehicle in a timely manner and
apparently the family proceeded to bury the child.”
Minister Anthony noted that the mix-up is unfortunate and has ordered that the Regional Health
Officer conduct a thorough investigation, so that corrective measures could be put in place.