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LONDON: Facing questions about why the death toll in Britain from COVID-19 was now the second-worst in Europe after Italy, a British minister said on Sunday (May 3) that people should not jump to conclusions and that the full picture was still unclear.
The death toll was 28,131 as of May 1, just below the Italian total, increasing pressure on the conservative government, accused by the opposition of acting too slowly in the early stages of the outbreak.
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Ministers have rejected comparisons of the total number of deaths with that of other countries, saying that excess mortality, the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year, was a more significant metric.
The most recent available data showed that there were almost 12,000 excess deaths in England and Wales in the week to April 17.
Of these, just under 9,000 were linked on death certificates to COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the new coronavirus.
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Analysis by media such as Sky News and the Financial Times suggests that those numbers are worse than in other European countries.
Appearing on Sky News on Sunday, Transportation Minister Grant Shapps rejected a suggestion that evidence of excess mortality showed that the government’s response to the outbreak had failed.
“You need to analyze that over a much longer period of time. So we will have to look back for a year, I’m afraid, so as not to be evasive, but we just won’t have that information,” Shapps said. “It’s much more complex than what you’re making it sound like.”
He said some impacts of the outbreak would not be known for a long time and that differences in age and health profiles of nations, as well as population size and density, were among many factors that should be considered.
“You have to look at the whole picture and that information is just not yet available,” he said. “We shouldn’t look at the raw data and jump to conclusions.”
“INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT COMPARISONS”
UK national statistician Ian Diamond also cautioned against relying on any “leaderboard” for the worst affected countries.
“I am not saying that we are at the bottom of any potential league table, it is almost impossible to calculate a league table, but I am not prepared to say that we are headed to the top,” he said during an interview on BBC News.
READ: COVID-19’s death rate in disadvantaged areas of England doubles that of the most disadvantaged
Diamond, the head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which collects the numbers of excess deaths, said it was “incredibly difficult” to make international comparisons.
He said the way Britain counted and reported their coronavirus-related deaths was the most transparent, because the ONS included deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, even if the person had not been examined .
In some other countries, only people who tested positive for the new coronavirus before dying are included in official statistics.
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