Covid was a causative factor in the unexpected death of Michael Laffan (66), husband of the Chancellor of Limerick University, Prof Brigid Laffan, who died while swimming at Seapoint, Dún Laoghaire, in January 2022, a coroner has ruled.
The inquest into the death of Mr Laffan, a retired businessman from The Slopes, Monkstown, Co Dublin, heard he was a fit and healthy non-smoker, who drank moderately and had no significant underlying medical conditions.
A regular sea-swimmer, he went for a swim at 12.10pm on January 5th with five others but got into difficulty on his way back to the slip from where he and the others had entered the water.
Prof Laffan, who was at Seapoint with her husband and her son Diarmuid, said she thought it was unusual when she saw her husband stop while still in the water, “which was very cold”. When he started swimming again, he did so erratically. She saw him stop swimming again and “saw him go down” so that only his safety buoy was visible.
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“Something happened,” she said. “I don’t know what that was, but something happened.”
Diarmuid Laffan told the inquest his father swam “almost every day” and was “not too far from the changing area” when he appeared to get in trouble. He jumped into the sea and swam towards him.
His father was about fifteen or twenty metres from the slipway and he and another man brought him to the shore. His father was face-down at first and when they flipped him over, he let out what sounded like a death rattle. “I think probably he died in the water.”
Mr Laffan was given immediate care, including CPR, from two doctors who were present. Diarmuid Laffan said that for the first ten minutes after his father was taken from the water, he “thought it would be like TV” and his father, who was so healthy, would revive. But he remained unresponsive.
The inquest heard the ambulance service got a call at 12.55 pm and that a pre-alert call was made to St Vincent’s Hospital just before 1pm. Mr Laffan was taken to the hospital where he received further treatment but was pronounced dead at 14.42.
The inquest heard the sea water temperature was between 5 and 6 degrees Celsius on January 5th. Prof Laffan told the inquest that data on her husband’s Garmin watch showed he normally did approximately 350 strokes but had done 550 on the day he died. Four of the other swimmers he had been with had turned back earlier, but he went on for a longer swim, as did another swimmer, she said. “I don’t know why.”
Dublin Coroner Aisling Gannon said the post-mortem examination found “no evidence” that Mr Laffan had suffered a heart attack prior to getting into difficulty but that he did have Covid. Prof Laffan said her husband and the family had not known this.
The coroner said it was not clear the extent to which having the Covid virus in a person’s body affects their endurance when undergoing exercise. Mr Laffan had gone for a longer swim on the day in question, but it was not a long swim for a man with his level of fitness. The feature that was different was that Covid was in his system, she said. The virus may have affected his ability to swim the distance he did. Hypothermia may have been a contributory, but not a causative factor, she said. Mr Laffan, she decided, had died from drowning with Covid also a causative factor.
The family thanked everyone who tried to help Mr Laffan. “If Michael could have been saved, he would have been saved,” Prof Laffan said.
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