The 17-year-old\u2019s death followed a second test that proved negative, but under the guidelines of the time set by Stormont\u2019s Department of Health<\/a>, deaths within 28 days of a positive test were listed as Covid fatalities.<\/p>\n At the time of his death, he was the youngest person in Northern Ireland listed as having died of Covid. The following year, the death of a child under 15 linked to Covid was listed.<\/p>\n The teen had Cushing\u2019s Syndrome, a rare condition caused by overproduction of the hormone cortisol.<\/p>\n Following his death, his father said he did not want Aaron to be a Covid \u201cstatistic\u201d, and said as far as the family is concerned, he died of heart failure.<\/p>\n Delays in fixing a date for an inquest were raised on Friday at a preliminary Coroners\u2019 Court hearing in Belfast, which Aaron\u2019s parents attended via video-link from Derry.<\/p>\n The court heard that two outstanding experts\u2019 reports are expected to be available within 10 weeks, when the next hearing is scheduled.<\/p>\n Addressing Aaron\u2019s parents, Coroner Anne-Louise Toal said: \u201cI know you have been waiting a long time\u201d, and said she hoped to have the inquest listed \u201cby the end of this year\u201d.<\/p>\n She added: \u201cWe are making sure that all the evidence that needs to be before me is before me. I do understand your frustration \u2013 I\u2019m fully cognizant of how long you have waited. I\u2019m moving things as quickly as I can.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A coroner has expressed hope that an inquest into the death of a teenager who had been listed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":840540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[104253,35413,16767,105683,1144,16,15],"class_list":["post-840539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-altnagelvin-hospital","tag-covid-pandemic","tag-derry","tag-inquest","tag-northern-ireland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116266898058175327","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Gerry](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/JNX56AEOWBD2REK5BH3C3UMOBA.JPG\")
<\/a>![\"‘A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/73NLWFUFOZKXHHFWDPFMIAJPXY.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n