Six days have elapsed since the last time a patient with the covid-19 coronavirus died at any of the hospitals run by Brighton and Hove’s main NHS trust.
Since the start of the pandemic, Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals (BSUH) has recorded 96 deaths of patients with the virus.
The figures do not make clear whether they died from the coronavirus or whether they had the virus but died from another cause.
The trust runs the Royal Sussex County Hospital and the Royal Alexandra Children’s Hospital, in Brighton, and the Princess Royal Hospital, in Haywards Heath.
The Royal Sussex operates as both a local and regional hospital and – with the figures covering the Princess Royal – not all of those who died will have been from Brighton and Hove.
But the numbers do not include people who have die in care homes, hospices or in their own homes and who were suffering from the coronavirus.
The Sussex Community Foundation Trust, which has its headquarters at Brighton General Hospital, has recorded 14 deaths so far.
The Brighton General is no longer run as a hospital but the NHS trust runs hospitals in other parts of Sussex.
Neighbouring hospital trusts have continued to report more deaths over the past week, including Western Hospitals Trust, which runs Worthing General Hospital and St Richard’s, in Chichester. The trust shares its leadership with BSUH.
The latest figures show that Western has recorded the death of 75 people with the coronavirus.
East Sussex Healthcare, which runs hospitals in Eastbourne and Hastings, has recorded 61 deaths to date.
And Surrey and Sussex Healthcare (SASH) has recorded 189 deaths, according to figures published today (Wednesday 29 April).
Yesterday Public Health England (PHE) said that 586 more people had died in British hospitals after contracting the coronavirus in the previous 24 hours, bringing the total to 21,678.
The numbers were given more context by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) yesterday when it reported deaths in England and Wales up to Friday 17 April.
The ONS said that, in England and Wales alone, there were 22,300 coronavirus-related deaths up to Friday 17 April compared with the 14,451 hospital deaths reported by the government.
The big difference was explained in a number of ways including the government sticking to the hospital death toll.
The hospital figures tend to come through quickly and reliably while deaths elsewhere can take longer to register and show up in the official statistics.
In Brighton and Hove so far there have been 346 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. In East Sussex the number is 524 and in West Sussex it is 1,061, making 1,941 across Sussex as a whole.
