Thousands of excess deaths in UK “collateral damage” of pandemic – expert

Thousands of excess deaths recorded during the coronavirus crisis in England and Wales could be “collateral damage” caused by the indirect effects of the pandemic, one statistician suggested.

Professor David Spiegelhalter, president of the Winton Center for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said that some 6,000 deaths had been “exported” to the community due to reduced hospital services.

Data released today found that the number of deaths in England and Wales exceeded normal levels by almost 47,000 during the pandemic.

Figures from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) show a total of 108,345 deaths recorded in the two nations between March 21, toward the start of the outbreak, and May 1, 2020.

This was 46,494 more deaths than the average for this period in the last five years, with Covid-19 responsible for 33,257 of these excess deaths, or 71.5%.

Professor Spiegelhalter told reporters that the proportion of excess deaths that coronavirus did not include on the death certificate had remained “reasonably constant,” between 25% and 30%.

But he said this suggests that many of them could be indirect deaths as a result of the virus.

“If people had learned to include it on the death certificate, they would have expected that number to go down and not go down much,” he said.

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“It is a constant factor that 25, 30% of the additional deaths have not been labeled as Covid.

“That could suggest to many that this is because many of them are indirect deaths, collateral damage from the interruption of the health service.”

Commenting on the ONS data, Sir David said that a drop in hospital deaths at the same time as an increase in deaths elsewhere suggested that some 6,000 deaths had been “exported to the community due to the closure of hospitals” .

A third of the “staggering” 30,000 excess deaths in nursing homes and homes had included Covid-19 on the death certificate, he told reporters.

“While some of them may be underdiagnosed, we do have a large number of essentially unexplained additional deaths in homes and residences,” he said.

“We are used to excess mortality, in 2017 to 18 there were 50,000 excess winter deaths, but that was a bad winter, a serious flu, etc.

“This is extraordinary and when we look back on this entire episode, this increase in additional non-Covid deaths outside of the hospital is something I hope will receive a lot of attention.”

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Professor Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine at Oxford University, suggested that people who are not well but who are not seeking medical attention could contribute to the number of excess deaths.

“As an anecdote, what I am seeing is this decrease in admissions to the emergency department, decrease in general practitioner visits that coincides with this decrease in urgent care,” he told reporters.

“This suggests that the message of staying home has been potentially interpreted as people who have not felt well that they have stayed home and have led to this excess death.”

The UK Alzheimer’s Society expressed concern about the total number of deaths in nursing homes that is higher than average for this time of year.

Fiona Carragher, director of research and influence, said: “70% of nursing home residents have dementia and we are deeply concerned that this indicates an increase in deaths from dementia, caused by the isolation and reduction of workers of care. “

The ONS is investigating these non-coronavirus deaths, which it says will publish a detailed analysis of this in the future.

Along with the figures for Scotland and Northern Ireland, the total number of excess deaths in the UK between March 21 and May 1 is almost 51,000.

Meanwhile, deaths in nursing homes accounted for 40% of coronavirus-related deaths in England and Wales in the week ending May 1, according to the ONS.

Of the 6,035 Covid-19 related deaths recorded this week, some 2,423 (40%) were in nursing homes, compared to 3,214 (53%) in hospitals.

Supporting the welfare sector through this pandemic has always been a priority, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that they have everything they need to care for those in their care.

This weekly number of deaths in nursing homes is a slight decrease of 2,794 in the previous seven days and is the first weekly decrease since March 20.

Looking at the figures by date of death, they suggest a spike in daily care home deaths that may have occurred on April 17, when 415 deaths occurred.

In response to the latest figures, care minister Helen Whately said it was “relief” that the number of deaths in care homes was decreasing.

“Supporting the social care sector through this pandemic has always been a priority, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure that they have everything they need to care for those in their care,” he said.

The latest figures say there were 17,953 deaths recorded in England and Wales in the week to May 1, a decrease for the second consecutive week.

But Nick Stripe, ONS chief health analyst, told BBC News that this is approximately 8,000 above the expected average for this time of year.

He said, “So it’s actually the seventh highest weekly total since this dataset started in 1993, so we’ve had four of the first seven weeks in the last four weeks.”