By Paul Homewood
Sorry if you’re all fed up with coronavirus stories, but I thought it worth presenting this analysis of the latest weekly deaths data from ONS for W/E 10th April.
In headline terms, 6213 deaths were registered in England & Wales during w/e 10th April, where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. Note that this does not necessarily mean a positive test – according to ONS:
A doctor can certify the involvement of COVID-19 based on symptoms and clinical findings – a positive test result is not required.
There are of course lags, with some deaths not being registered for several days, so ONS helpfully also give data for deaths by date of death, as registered by 18th April.
This indicates that the actual death toll for w/e 10th April was 6146, slightly less than the headline figure:
ONS also provide numbers for the whole of the UK, amounting to 6887:
This compares with the daily totals published by the government, which only reflect deaths in hospitals, amounting to 5353, a difference of 1534:
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uk/
Effectively, the difference is made up of deaths outside hospitals, which in England & Wales totalled 1256:
One of the things which has shocked statisticians is the dramatic increase in excess deaths in the last fortnight. That is the numbers of deaths over the normally expected.
The latest figures show excess deaths of 8000 during w/e 10th April, much greater than COVID-19 toll. But what is a bigger mystery is that deaths from respiratory disease are only a few hundred more than usual. It is after all generally understood that COVID-19 is primarily a killer because it leads to pneumonia.
[It must be pointed out here that the respiratory disease line below INCLUDES deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned. In other words, the same deaths can appear in both numbers].
It may be that many COVID-19 deaths have underlying causes such as lung cancer, which would not appear as “respiratory disease”, and as such may only have shortened lives by a few weeks or months in most cases. We would need to wait for the ONS analysis by cause of death to judge this.
But there is one more clue.
If we compare care home deaths, we see that total deaths (not just COVID-19) have increased by 2438 since w/e 27th March. Yet COVID-19 only accounts for 806 of this increase:
The suspicion is that many died in care homes after falling ill with coronavirus, just in the same way as happens with flu, gastro enteritis, bad colds and so on.
That does not mean that COVID-19 killed them any more than the bad cold did to others.
It is sad when anybody dies, but, without wanting to appear heartless, my guess is that when the year is over these excess deaths in care homes will be no more than a blip, and that mortality in care homes will be little different to an average year.
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April 21, 2020 at 06:03AM
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