Dr. Michael O'Dwyer:

The figures are probably underestimated in the sense that they count acute public hospital admissions but do not take account of community hospitals and the private sector. It is very dependent on coding so if the code is incorrect and somebody is labelled as having pneumonia when it should be sepsis, it does not get picked up in the numbers. Our best estimate is 13,000 but I suspect that the number is probably higher. Among those 13,000, the mortality rate in Ireland is about 20%.