April 24, 2020

expert comment about COVID-19 and ‘excess deaths’ in the week ending April 10th

Comment about COVID-19 and ‘excess deaths’ in the week ending April 10th.

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

“I have published a blog today on excess deaths: https://medium.com/@d_spiegel/covid-and-excess-deaths-in-the-week-ending-april-10th-20ca7d355ec4

“8000 excess deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending April 10th, but 1800 of these do not mention COVID-19.  Place of death may provide a clue.  70% of extra deaths in care homes and at home are not labelled as COVID.  But there has been a 27% drop in non-COVID deaths in hospital, closely matching the 29% drop in hospital admissions in March.  It is not clear how many of these NON-COVID excess deaths are under-diagnosis, and how much collateral damage.  But apparent shift of non-COVID deaths from hospital to community points to a substantial impact of the current lockdown on vulnerable people who do not have COVID.”

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

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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