August 25, 2020

expert reaction to latest ONS death data for England and Wales

The Office for National Statistic (ONS) have released the latest data on deaths in England and Wales, including deaths from COVID-19 in all settings. 

Prof Hannah Cloke, Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading, said:

“Thanks to the current media attention on coronavirus deaths, there is currently very high scrutiny of weekly death rates produced almost in real time by the Office for National Statistics.

“Today, these figures showed something quite extraordinary for the second week of August. While deaths from coronavirus continued to decline, at least 300 more people died across England and Wales than expected. In the absence of evidence of any new covid spike, the ONS have actually put their finger on a potentially much more alarming silent killer, by suggesting that high temperatures are to blame.

“This is truly extraordinary. While more research needs to be done to confirm this, it is very likely that the week-long heatwave that saw tropical nights and regular daytime temperatures above 35 degrees killed hundreds of people.  My research colleague Chloe Brimicombe postulated this a week ago (https://theconversation.com/heatwaves-are-an-invisible-killer-and-the-uk-is-woefully-unprepared-144703)

“Heatwaves are one of the extremes of weather that are most closely linked to climate change. As the average temperature rises, potentially lethal extremes of heat in places like the UK and other densely populated regions will become more common.

“This heatwave tragedy reminds us of the cost in human lives, here in Britain, of the climate change emergency. Coming in the middle of a pandemic, it reminds us to ask ourselves, what is the value of human life? We have been willing to radically shift our economy to save people from a virus. The evidence is mounting up that we face more and more tragedies of this scale unless we take serious and fast long-term action on tackling climate change.”

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

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

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