May 7, 2021

expert reaction to ONS report on excess deaths registered in England and Wales in 2020

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released an analysis of deaths registered in 2020 in England and Wales, and how they compared with the five-year average (2015 to 2019).

Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said:

“I’ll just comment on one aspect. The report points out that the bulk of excess deaths in 2020 were in care homes and in people’s own homes, but it also makes it clear that the position is different in those two settings. In care homes, though there were almost 25,000 more deaths in 2020 than the five-year average for 2015-2019, most were due to Covid-19. That fits what we already know well about the devasting direct effect of the virus on care home residents last year. But far more excess deaths – 41,000, which is more than half of the total 2020 excess deaths – occurred in people’s own homes. Only about 3,000 of those excess deaths involved Covid-19 directly. The great majority were deaths from other causes. The fact that there were so many additional deaths at home from non-Covid causes has been known for a long time from other regular ONS data, but this bulletin adds much more detailed data on the causes. We can see that the causes ran right across the spectrum of all causes of death, with just a very few exceptions. ONS say that these are deaths, from a very wide range of causes, that would mostly have occurred in hospital in previous years.

“This bulletin only covers deaths during 2020, but the general pattern continues. In this week’s regular weekly ONS bulletin on death registrations, for example, there were 782 excess deaths from all causes in people’s own homes, of which only 39 involved Covid-19. Deaths were running below the long-term average in hospitals and care homes. This year so far, there have been on average around 100 more deaths every day, not due to Covid-19, than the five-year average. (ONS haven’t yet been able release data on the causes of those deaths in 2021.) That is a huge change in the pattern of where people die. But what these bulletins can’t tell us about is the quality of those deaths. Perhaps people, and their relatives, were happy for the death to occur at home rather in the anonymous medicalised surroundings of a hospital. But what was the quality of their end-of-life care?”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/excessdeathsregisteredin2020englandandwales

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

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

Prof Kevin McConway: “I am a Trustee of the SMC and a member of its Advisory Committee.  However, my quote above is in my capacity as an independent professional statistician.”