Durham Police are investigating the death of a woman in her 50s days after paramedics from the North East Ambulance Service declared her dead and brought her to Darlington Hospital where she woke up.

The death is being treated as 'unexpected' by the police and a post-mortem will be carried out soon.

The woman was pronounced dead by North East Ambulance Service paramedics before being taken to Darlington Memorial Hospital where she miraculously woke up.

Read more: Darlington patient pronounced 'dead' by paramedics was alive

It has now been confirmed that the patient has died and a police investigation has been started.

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A spokesperson for Durham Police said: "Officers are investigating following the death of a woman in her 50s.

"The death is currently being treated as unexpected and a post-mortem will be carried out shortly."

The North East Ambulance Service previously said that they were "deeply sorry for the distress caused to the patient's family".

Andrew Hodge, Director of Paramedicine at North East Ambulance Service, previously said: "As soon as we were made aware of this incident, we opened an investigation and contacted the patient’s family.

"We are deeply sorry for the distress that this has caused them.  A full review of this incident is being undertaken and we are unable to comment any further at this stage.

"The colleagues involved are being supported appropriately and we will not be commenting further about any individuals at this point."

This comes months after damning reports about paramedics hiding medical errors and withholding evidence at coroner's inquests.

Dame Marianne Griffiths, a former hospital boss who organised the report, said: "Both this investigation and previous reports have found a number of failings in how the Trust should have responded to the incidents and then in their response to concerns about how failings were accepted and followed up.

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"It is important that the Trust formally and publicly reiterates that there have been failings and restates its wholehearted apologies to the families concerned.

"Leadership dysfunction was allowed to continue for far too long and this had a major impact on how teams within different directorates operated.

"A defensiveness grew and affected team operations, transparency, candour and judgement. They also clearly impacted the health and wellbeing of staff."