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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released their latest retrospective stats for deaths involving COVID-19 in the UK.
Prof Sheila Bird, Formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“The latest death-data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) suggest that COVID-19 mention deaths in England and Wales peaked in week 16 (ended 17 April 2020) at just over 8 000 occurrences in that week. However, for persons aged under 80 years, the peak was actually earlier, in week 15 (ended 10 April 2020) at nearly 3 600 COVID-mention deaths whereas, for those aged 80+ years, COVID-mention deaths appear to have just peaked at around 4 900 deaths in week 16.
“COVID-mention deaths account for 71% of the cumulative toll in England & Wales of an additional 38 400 “COVID-era” deaths (to nearest 100), which were registered during 7 March to 24 April of 2020. Additional means over and above the death-registrations that would have been expected: based on the past 5-years.
“Of course, due to the late registration in England & Wales of coroner-referred deaths, such as those by suicide or child-deaths at 5-14 years or deaths related occupational exposure, any collateral increase in such deaths during the COVID-era are uncounted as yet.
“Since 2010, in the aftermath of swine-flu, the Royal Statistical Society has pressed for legislation to end the late registration of inquest-deaths in England and Wales so that ONS at least knows about fact-of-death. All deaths are counted promptly in Scotland where fact-of-death must be registered with National Records of Scotland within 8 days of death having been ascertained. Please, let’s have equivalent performance in England & Wales.”
Prof James Naismith FRS FRSE FMedSci, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and University of Oxford, said:
“ONS and the Scottish equivalent data represent the most comprehensive data on the effects of Coivd19. We can draw the following conclusions from the ONS data. The UK has been hit very hard in this wave of Covid19 and each death will brought sadness to families. We are now well past the peak number of deaths in hospital. The deaths in hospital represent the majority of the deaths from Covid19 and thus the overall number of daily deaths has peaked. There are so called ‘excess’ deaths this year compared to last year, that are not identified as Covid19. We urgently need to identify the cause of these deaths. There are many plausible theories as to their cause, however, we need real data on this urgently. As we go forward, we want to minimise all deaths, not just those tagged as Covid19. The data indicate that the peak of daily deaths in care homes has passed but occurred later than the peak in hospitals. The peak of deaths in hospitals was April 8th suggesting softer measures may have had some benefit. We need to fully understand the effect of each of the measures we introduced, on viral spread in the community and in care homes. These new studies are vital, the virus has not gone away and its potential to spread rapidly and overwhelm the health care system is likely to be undiminished.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/covid-19/
Declared interests
Prof Sheila Bird: “I lead for the Royal Statistical Society on the need for legislation to end the late registration of deaths in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. I am also a member of RSS’s COVID-19 Taskforce but write here in a personal capacity.”