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NHS England have published the latest figure for reported deaths in hospitals in England from COVID-19 – an additional 178 deaths since yesterday, bringing the total to 23,149. Additionally, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have announced the latest reported figures for cases (219,183) of and deaths (31,855) from COVID-19 across the whole of the UK.
On the DHSC figures for the whole of the UK
Prof Sheila Bird, writing in a personal capacity but formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“Daily reporting on Pillar 2 swab-testing is a perfection of un-interpretability.
“First, Pillar 2 combines at least three tiers: swab testing for essential workers (1) and their households (2), as well as other groups that meet the eligibility criteria as set out in government guidance(3), which is far too long a read given that the results from all three are muddled together anyway.
“Second, Pillar 2 (daily) comprised 62 653 tests because in-person tests processed [38 852] and deliveries (tests sent out) [23 801] have been counted together. This deceit is only too familiar!
“Third, Pillar 2 (daily) tested 46 174 people across its three tiers. Does this mean that 46 174 minus 38 852 = 7 322 persons were tested because their swab had been sent out (or delivered) on a date prior to the result-date?
“Fourth, if Pillar 2 sends out around 24 000 tests daily, should we interpret today’s returns as meaning that between a quarter and a third of yesterday’s deliveries are returned in time for next-day testing? If so, how long does it take for the remainder to come in?
“Let’s suspend disbelief and assume that 46 174 persons across the three tiers of Pillar 2 got their test results on a single day, of whom 2 471 (5.35%) were positive for coronavirus-2, just over 1 in 20 of Pillar 2’s testees.
“Fifth, reality-check: result-date is a process-date, not the epidemic’s time-line which is reflected by the date on which the testee was swabbed.
“Sixth veil to be removed is therefore: please provide the swab-date for each of the 46 174 persons in Pillar 2 whose test-result is announced today and, for each swab-date that is represented by at least 100 persons, please provide the number of persons and number who tested positive so that positive-rate can be tracked within Pillar 2 by swab-date (not result-date).
“Seventh, better still, report the positive-rates by swab-date separately for the three tiers within Pillar 2.
“Reporting well once a week is preferable to reporting daily but dismally.”
On the NHS England figures
Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Jason Oke, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, said:
“Today’s reported figure is 178 deaths in hospitals in England. These deaths are distributed back to the 17th of March: 169 (95%) of the deaths were in the last week, and 9 (5%) occurred more than 7 days ago.
“For comparison: the reported deaths in hospitals in England on the same weekday 1, 2 and 3 weeks ago were:
“We have added a new figure to our daily report, see below.
“Deaths of patients who have died in hospitals in England where a positive test result for COVID-19 was not received but COVID-19 is mentioned on their death certificate.
“These deaths go back to the 24th April. Today, 13 of the 178 (7.3%) deaths are reported with no positive COVID-19 test result.”
The CEBM evidence report for today is here.
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
Prof Bird chaired the Royal Statistical Society’s Working Party on Performance Monitoring in the Public Services (2003) and is a member of the RSS COVID-19 Taskforce (see here).
No others received.