There has been another Covid-19 related death confirmed in the island.

This brings the total since the start of the pandemic to 107.

As has been the case throughout reporting of Covid-19, death registrations are often delayed and therefore deaths occurring in a given week may not be input into the week of which death occurred until a later date, meaning figures are likely to change retrospectively as data is updated.

This also means that the most recent numbers will be incomplete at the time of release, and will update in subsequent reports.

Essentially, it is unclear when exactly this latest death actually occurred.

The report does reveal that the latest reported death occurred in hospital.

More generally, around 29.9% of deaths have been in the 90+ age range, 39.3% have been aged 80-89 and 17.8% have been aged 70-79.

Elsewhere, the current seven-day average for reported positive results is 18, with the trend of case numbers reported from testing showing a slight decrease. Indeed, this week saw a fall or plateauing in case numbers across all age groups.

The effective reproduction number (Rt) was 0.77 this week, a further slight decrease from last week’s value of 0.86.

It is worth noting that Rt values are sensitive to large fluctuations when daily case numbers are small.

Case ascertainment and calculation of the reproduction number is dependent on patterns of testing and reporting so it is likely that there are more cases than are currently notified.

This caveat has applied throughout the pandemic when Covid has been transmitting on island, although the change to LFD self testing and self reporting may have impacted on that to an unknown extent.

Further changes to testing guidance published on April 1 are likely having an additional impact. This week we have seen a slight fall in seven-day average daily reporting from 24 to 18. Some of this is likely to be due to changes in testing and reporting.

However, there is also likely to be a true fall as this would be in line with the fall in cases being reported in the UK from the Office of National Statistics Infection Survey.

The snapshot of Noble’s Hospital shows seven patients currently admitted with a Covid-19 positive status.

Of these patients, 57% are vaccinated and boosted, 29% are vaccinated, and 14% are unvaccinated.

Due to small numbers, and the associated caveats and identifiability, the additional narrative for the hospital snapshot is not available in this week’s report.