Coronavirus death toll in the UK may have ALREADY hit 41,000 when non-hospital victims are counted, analysis claims
- Department of Health statistics put the UK’s current death toll at 17,337
- The NHS backdates deaths so many that have happened are not yet announced
- Detailed statistics are released once a week but are always 10 days behind
- It will take weeks for records of non-hospital deaths and backdating to catch up
- Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19
The coronavirus outbreak in the UK may have killed more than 41,000 people already when non-hospital deaths are included.
Office for National Statistics data, which includes victims who have died at home or in nursing homes, puts the total fatalities significantly higher than the day-by-day hospital tallies released by the NHS and Department of Health.
But the main drawback of the ONS statistics, which come out once per week, is that they’re 10 days out of date by the time they get published.
A forecast by the Financial Times has suggested that, by the time data for yesterday is released, it will turn out that at least 41,102 people had already died. The newspaper called this a ‘conservative’ estimate.
The current death toll according to the NHS and the Department of Health is just 17,337.
Statistics yesterday suggested the true figure including care homes deaths is at least 42 per cent higher, and revealed that the first full week of April, from the 4th to the 10th, was the deadliest week in England Wales for 20 years – 18,615 people died.
Almost 8,000 of those were considered ‘excess deaths’ – ones which would not be expected in an average week at that time of year – and were thought to be linked to COVID-19.
The Office for National Statistics, which releases data once per week and counts deaths that happen outside of hospitals, already outstrip NHS statistics by at least 41 per cent
The FT extrapolation is based on this number of excess deaths, and similar data from Scotland and Northern Ireland, but its exact workings are not immediately clear.
Its model essentially forecasts how the backdated data, including deaths which happened outside of hospitals, could look in 10 days’ time.
It is based on data from the National Records of Scotland and Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, as well as the ONS, which covers England and Wales.
There have been around 17,000 excess deaths across the UK since mid-March, these statistics show, but the number is out of date due to a lag in reporting.
The estimate of 41,102 deaths by April 21 includes more than 10,000 taking place in care homes.
ONS figures already show that one in 10 coronavirus deaths between April 4 and April 10 happened in nursing homes in England and Wales.
And this number is expected to increase as more data becomes available for the days around the peak of the fatalities in hospitals, now thought to have been April 8.
ONS statistics yesterday showed that deaths in care homes had doubled over recent weeks but only 17 per cent of the death certificates mentioned COVID-19.
Professor David Spiegelhalter, from the University of Cambridge, told the FT it was not likely that those were the only ones in which the coronavirus played a part.
He said indirect effects – such as people avoiding hospital for fear of catching the virus there – were not likely to account for such a huge spike in deaths.
‘There is no suggestion that the collateral damage, however large it is, is anything like as big as the harm from COVID,’ Professor Spiegelhalter said.