January 20, 2021

expert reaction to latest reported COVID-19 daily deaths on the Coronavirus dashboard

A comment from Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter on the latest reported COVID-19 daily deaths, including the 1,038 deaths recorded on 12th January.

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Chair, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge, said:

“Although the Coronavirus dashboard shows more deaths occurring on January 12th than on any day in the first wave of the pandemic, their definition of a Covid death means that only people who test positive can be counted. But testing was limited in the first wave, and in fact 1,456 deaths occurred on April 8th which were later registered with Covid on the death certificate.  So the current death rate is still well below the peak of the first wave.”

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter: “No COI.”