Plan B Forum

Scooter wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 12, 2020 8:59 pm

Coronavirus deaths more than twice hospital toll, data indicate

Chris Giles and Gill Plimmer in London YESTERDAY

The coronavirus pandemic appears to be killing more than twice the number of people recorded in daily figures from hospitals, according to the latest official death statistics for England and Wales.

The data suggest the extent of the crisis is deeper than previously thought, particularly in care homes — where a third of all deaths were recorded in the week to April 17.

In that week, 22,351 deaths were registered in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics, the highest figure since comparable weekly data started in 1993 and worse than any figure in similar data of the past 50 years. The average for the comparable week from 2015-2019 was 10,497.

Since the beginning of March, there have been 27,015 more deaths registered up to April 17 than the five-year average for the time of year.

With an average delay of four days between someone dying and their death being registered, the figures relate to the period to April 13, during which the government said there had been 11,408 deaths of people testing positive for coronavirus in English and Welsh hospitals.

If data are included from Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the dates do not entirely match, 29,751 excess deaths were recorded by mid-April, far above the government’s latest daily running total of 21,678.

The official figures verified Financial Times modelling that suggested 41,000 people across the UK had died by last Tuesday either directly or indirectly as a result of coronavirus, with the death registrations higher than expected by the FT's model.

With almost 30,000 excess deaths by mid-April across the UK, approximately two weeks ago, the number of total deaths now is likely to be about 47,000, according to the FT model.

Much of the increase in deaths has been recorded in care homes. In the week to April 17, 7,316 deaths were recorded in care homes, compared with an average of 2,154 for that week in care homes over the past five years. The fact that excess deaths in care homes were 5,000 more than the long-term average in one week suggests the crisis in the care sector is even deeper than previously feared.

The ONS said the number of deaths in care homes had been rising as a proportion of total deaths, adding that the peak of the epidemic in care homes appeared to be later than that in hospitals. “We are starting to see more deaths occurring in private homes and care homes,” it said.