South West Yorkshire NHS partnership has not recorded any deaths due to Covid-19 between February and September 2020.
This is true and comes from a real freedom of information request. However, this NHS trust would be unlikely to treat people seriously ill with Covid-19 because it provides disability, mental health and community services.
We’ve been asked about and have seen posts which claim to show a Freedom of Information (FOI) request regarding deaths in the South West Yorkshire NHS Partnership.
The question submitted for an FOI reads:
“I am trying to gather the information regarding to actual deaths with in [sic] the trust due to covid 19 For the period of February 2020 to September 2020.”
And the response: “South West Yorkshire NHS Partnership Foundation Trust has not had any deaths due to Covid-19.”
Reuters have confirmed that this is a real FOI and the information here is correct.
The lack of Covid-19 deaths in this trust can be explained by it being a “specialist NHS foundation trust that provides community, mental health and learning disability services”. As the trust does not provide the type of care needed by people seriously ill with Covid, it’s unlikely they would have dealt with any deaths.
This is not to say that Yorkshire has not experienced any Covid deaths. According to government data, up until the end of September, the English region of Yorkshire and the Humber recorded 5,012 deaths where Covid was mentioned on the death certificate. So while people in Yorkshire have died of Covid-19, it has not been while they were in facilities run by the South West Yorkshire partnership.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because this is a real FOI, but the South West Yorkshire NHS Partnership does not run the kinds of facilities where people are likely to die of Covid-19.
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