August 23, 2021

expert reaction to the ONS monthly mortality analysis for England and Wales: July 2021

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released their monthly mortality analysis for England and Wales in July 2021.

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

“The monthly ONS mortality analyses for England and Wales release contain a great deal more detail than the weekly releases of provisional mortality data. I’ll comment on just three aspects, that I found interesting and potentially important.

“Many people, including me, have pointed out repeatedly that vaccination has weakened the link between Covid-19 infections and deaths. That’s certainly true, but it has sometimes been taken to mean that we shouldn’t really be very concerned about the fact that infection levels are pretty high now compared to the position last year, because very few people will get seriously ill or die from Covid-19. This new ONS release casts some light on that. The latest month for which data are available is July 2021. In July 2021, 1,096 people in England and Wales sadly died from Covid-19. These are deaths where Covid-19 was classified as the underlying cause – so not people who happened to have Covid-19 but the underlying cause of their death was something else. In July 2020, the corresponding number was 776, so fewer deaths. Those are the numbers if you classify the deaths by the date when the person died. ONS also provide data classified by when the death was registered, and the numbers are rather different because of the delay between death and registration – 1,012 deaths caused by Covid-19 registered in England and Wales in July 2021, and 1,055 in July 2020. So, whichever way you look at it, at least roughly the same number of deaths caused by Covid-19 in July 2021 as in the same month the year before, and probably there were quite a few more deaths in July 2021 than a year before. Now it’s true that vaccines have had an effect. According to the ONS Covid-19 Infection Survey (CIS) for England, about 1 person in every 75 would have tested positive for the virus in mid-July 2021, far more than in mid-July 2020 when the corresponding rate was about 1 in 2,000. (I can’t give corresponding figures for Wales, because the CIS wasn’t running in Wales in July last year.) So far more infection around this July than last, but similar or greater numbers of deaths caused by Covid-19. This does point to a reduction in the chance of dying, if one is infected, which must be largely due to vaccination. But deaths are still occurring at quite a considerable rate – the successful  vaccination roll-out certainly hasn’t reduced the deaths to a tiny number. We can’t tell from these figures whether the people who are dying are vaccinated or not. But vaccination doesn’t miraculously fix everything. We certainly need the vaccines, but that’s not all we need.

“ONS have also published data for England and Wales on the pre-existing medical conditions that people who died of Covid-19 had. These data are published only on a quarterly basis, and the latest figures are for April to June 2021. In that quarter, as previously, most people whose death was caused by Covid-19 had a pre-existing medical condition. The following numbers are only for deaths where Covid-19 was the underlying cause. But for almost a fifth of these deaths, 19% of them, the person had no pre-existing condition. For people who died at an age under 65, almost a third (32%) had no pre-existing condition – and a quarter of the deaths caused by Covid-19 in those three months were of people aged under 65. Again it’s interesting to compare these figures with the same three months last year, April to June 2020. Then, a much smaller proportion of those whose death was due to Covid-19 had no pre-existing conditions – only around 1 in 8 (13%), compared to about one in five this year. And in people who died below the age of 65, about one in five (21%) had no pre-existing conditions in April to June last year, compared to almost one in three in the same months this year. Only about one in ten of Covid deaths back then in April to June 2020 were of people aged under 65, compared to a quarter this year. So the characteristics of the people who, sadly, died of Covid-19 have changed a lot compared to near the start of the pandemic last year – more younger people were dying in the second quarter of this year than the same quarter the year before, and both younger and older people were less likely to have pre-existing conditions this year than last. One the one hand, this also points to the success of vaccination – by April to June this year most people over 65 would have been fully vaccinated, but that was less likely for younger people, so the protective effective of vaccination against serious illness and death does show up. On the other hand, it does show what we already know, that serious Covid-19 illness and death doesn’t only strike down the elderly and those who already have some health condition that affects their chances.

“Finally, something that has little or nothing to do with Covid-19. You might remember how hot it got in much of England and Wales in mid-July this year. Today’s ONS data release gives daily numbers of deaths from all causes, for every day from 1 January 2020 to 31 July 2021, classified by the data when the person’s death occurred, not when it was registered. The latest numbers include only deaths that were registered by 7 August, so the counts given for the last few days of July will be incomplete because some deaths were not registered yet. But it’s very obvious that daily deaths during the very hot days were high. There were well over 1,400 deaths each day in England and Wales on the three days 19-21 July. The average daily figure for a slightly longer period, 17-22 July, was just over 1,400 a day. The average daily figure for 1-16 July was 1,260, so considerably smaller, and numbers after 22 July are also lower, though we begin to get into the period when the counts are incomplete because some deaths were not registered yet. This does illustrate something that’s very well known – the serious effect on some people’s health of very hot weather, even in the UK where we don’t get up to the sort of temperatures that have been occurring recently in the Mediterranean area.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/monthlymortalityanalysisjuly2021

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.  I am also a member of the Public Data Advisory Group, which provides expert advice to the Cabinet Office on aspects of public understanding of data during the pandemic.  My quote above is in my capacity as an independent professional statistician.”

None others received.