April 9, 2020

expert reaction to latest numbers of deaths in England, published by NHS England

NHS England have published the latest number of recorded deaths from COVID-19 in the UK – a further 765 people, bringing the total to 7,248 recorded deaths in hospital.

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

“Today’s count of reported deaths, although a terrible toll on families and NHS staff, strongly suggests we are approaching a plateau, although sadly this may be above 1,000 deaths a day.

“But on Tuesday many papers carried stories of a US organisation predicting 66,000 Covid deaths in the UK by August and a peak of nearly 3,000 a day.  These predictions are already looking fairly absurd.”

Prof James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute and Professor of Structural Biology, University of Oxford, said:

“The deaths announced today will have come as heartbreaking news to the bereaved families.  It is a mercy that the number of deaths reported today is lower than yesterday but on its own, a single day’s number is of no value in judging the pandemic.  The continuing volatility in daily figure of announced deaths (due to different reporting periods and delays) makes it almost impossible to identify any trend with certainty yet.  Experience of the last two weeks suggests that the upcoming weekend and bank holiday will significantly influence the reported figures in the days ahead.  However, if deaths are still following a rapid exponential growth, today’s new deaths would have been expected to be markedly higher than yesterday’s and the total number of deaths to date would have doubled from that four days ago.  It must be emphasised that most, if not all, the deaths reported today will have come from infections before the so called “hard lock down”.  It does seem that the “hard lock down” is, as expected, reducing the rate of increase in the number of new hospital admissions.

“I would add that today’s numbers do not support the most pessimistic outcome from the IHME model for the UK, that was widely discussed earlier in the week.  The models from IHME are very helpful in prompting analysis of health care needs during the epidemic.  I would caution (as the IHME does and many UK scientists have since) that there are a very large range of possible outcomes in the IHME model at this stage for the UK.  Cherry picking the worst or best case scenario without making equally clear the full range of possibilities is irresponsible and to do so, to support a pre-chosen view, is reprehensible.  The range of possibilities in the IHME model will narrow as more data is fed in, it is too early to use it to reliably predict the overall number of UK deaths.”

www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

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www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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