Image copyright
PA Media
Health Secretary Matt Hancock called for an urgent review of how coronavirus deaths have been recorded in England.
It follows Public Health England’s confirmation that the reported deaths may have included people who tested positive months before they died.
The other nations of the United Kingdom only include those who die within 28 days of a positive test.
There have been 40,528 virus-related deaths in England.
- How many confirmed cases are there in your area?
Professor Carl Heneghan of Oxford University, who discovered the problem with the data, told the BBC that there was “a great deal of variation” in the number of daily deaths reported in England by PHE.
While NHS England currently reports 30-35 deaths per day, England’s Public Health (PHE) data often shows twice or more, he said.
The reason is that anyone who has tested positive for coronavirus but later died at a later date from another cause would still be included in PHE’s Covid-19 death figures.
“By this definition of PHE, no one with Covid in England can recover from their illness,” says Professor Heneghan.
“We need correct and accurate statistics to be able to really understand the trend, otherwise it is very difficult to know what is happening,” he added.
Figures released today by PHE show that just under 10% of coronavirus deaths in England occurred more than 28 days after a positive test.
In almost half of those cases, Covid-19 was recorded as the leading cause of death.
What does this mean for the death toll from the England virus?
This could explain why the number of daily deaths in England has remained higher than in other UK nations.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales only include deaths in their daily count if someone died within 28 days of a positive test.
But that doesn’t mean that the majority of England’s coronavirus deaths are counting errors.
Statisticians say it’s best to look at death records that detect coronavirus cases that were never confirmed by a laboratory test.
And when you look at those numbers, or deaths from all causes, England still has one of the highest death tolls in Europe and the major developed economies in the pandemic, to date.
Dr. Susan Hopkins of Public Health England said there was no agreed method of counting Covid-19 deaths.
“In England, we count all deceased who had a positive Covid-19 test at any time, to ensure that our data is as complete as possible.”
“We must remember that this is a new and emerging infection and there is increasing evidence of long-term health problems for some of those affected.”
“Now is the right time to review how deaths are calculated,” said Dr. Hopkins.
Professor David Spiegelhalter, professor of public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge, has called for the same systems to be used to collect data on deaths across the UK.
There are also concerns about the impact on a potential second wave.
“As we move through the winter, it will become incredibly confusing and worrying if deaths increase while they still count and combine deaths from the first phase,” said Professor Heneghan.
“This means that we may be unable to detect early trends in the increase in deaths if we attribute them to historical deaths due to deficiencies in the current system.”
- GREAT BRITAIN CANCER CRISIS: How has cancer care been affected by Covid-19?
- DIET AND IMMUNE SYSTEM How important is a healthy diet?
