May 5, 2020

expert reaction to UK deaths overtaking Italy’s

The number of confirmed deaths from COVID-19 in the UK is now greater than in Italy. 

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

“The one thing we can be certain of is that all these numbers are substantial underestimates of the true number who have died from COVID, and an even bigger underestimate of the number who have died because of the epidemic and the measures taken against it.  I think we can safely say that none of these countries are doing well, but this is not Eurovision and it is pointless to try and rank them.  For example, apparently around half of Belgium’s deaths are people in care homes who have not been tested, and these would not feature at all in the daily UK figures.  I believe the only sensible comparison is by looking at excess all-cause mortality, adjusted for the age distribution of the country.  And even then it will be very difficult to ascribe the reasons for any differences.”

Dr Joshua Moon, research fellow in sustainability research methods at the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex Business School, said:

“Country comparisons can be useful but require reference to their testing and response to understand them fully. Starting with the data, the UK surpassing Italy in deaths needs to also be compared to deaths per million population and the case fatality rate in each country as well. The UK is not just closing in on Italy in terms of number of deaths but its case fatality rate (i.e. the ratio of cases to deaths) is higher already. This is a concerning indicator as cases come in for the UK.

“On testing and response, we need to be considering not just Italy but other countries in Europe and comparing the testing, contact tracing, lockdown, and isolation by each of the countries. By widening our scope to not just the data race for who did ‘better’ but to how they did ‘better’ we can learn to better respond now and in the future.

“On top of this, there is the need to track the impacts of these measures outside of COVID-19 as well. What are the impacts on other health services? What are the impacts of lockdown in individuals’ health? What economic hits have the measures had? How have different countries ensured compliance with the measures? How have these decisions been made?”

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.