The government’s online Covid-19 Daily Update Dashboard has been the subject of much scrutiny in recent weeks.

The dashboard, which is updated around 3pm each day, has been widely criticised due to seemingly contradictory figures published on a day-to-day basis.

More confusion surrounded the island’s latest Covid-related death on Sunday (August 1).

The death was announced publicly around 3.20pm via the online dashboard, when the ’deaths’ figure displayed updated from four to five.

As Isle of Man Newspapers had received no official confirmation, we did not publish an announcement immediately on our website, iomtoday.co.im

One of our reporters contacted the government to confirm the death at around 4pm.

We did not receive an official confirmation until 9.45pm - around six and a half hours after the death was announced on the online portal.

We contacted the Health Minister for clarification regarding the delay.

David Ashford said: ’In terms of the death at the weekend, that unfortunately came about due to the way the dashboard has changed to be mainly automated.

’No one realised the death field on the dashboard was also automated when the new updates were done a few months ago.

’That meant that as soon as the lab figures updated, the dashboard did, while [the government’s communications department] was still working on a statement, as at that point we still had no details from Manx Care about the circumstances around the death.

’I have asked that the field be set to manual so that it has to be physically input - so it can be timed with statements going forward.’

Mr Ashford was also asked whether the cases currently listed as being in hospital are people who have specifically gone into hospital due to Covid, or are being flagged because of in-house testing once they are there, and why no clear differentiation is available online to separate the two.

He said: ’They will be a mixture, and we are looking to have that breakdown on the dashboard.

’However it’s not simple, as people may move between categories and it also depends on medical opinion which may not always agree.

’For instance if someone is admitted with breathing difficulty and then tests positive, there would have to be a medical judgement of [are] the breathing difficulties due to Covid or due to something else.

’Equally, you may have someone admitted for something else, test positive [and] then get worse due to covid so [they would then] change categories.

’It’s sadly not as simple as it sounds.’

He added that: ’Hospital data would have to be collected manually and would also require patent consent for it to be shared.’