PHILO PHOTO: People are seen on a shopping street, amid the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) disease, in Windsor, UK 5 August 2020. REUTERS / Toby Melville
(Reuters) – The UK’s official COVID-19 daily death toll could be scrapped following an investigation into the UK Public Health’s method of toll counting, the Telegraph reported.
The findings of the investigation, which was commissioned by Health Secretary Matt Hancock after it appeared officials were “exaggerated” virus deaths, are expected this week, the newspaper said.
One recommendation could be to go for a weekly official death toll, instead of a government told the Telegraph.
Britain last month released its daily update on the death toll and put the government on an order on how Public Health England reports coronavirus deaths, after academics said the daily figures could include people who died of other causes.
Academics in a blog post had warned that the way the government health agency calculated the figures was skewed as patients who tested positive for coronavirus but were successfully treated would still be counted as dying from the virus “even if they had a heart attack as were overtaken by a bus three months later ”.
The death toll from England varies substantially from day to day for this reason, the academics had argued.
In contrast, the other parts of the UK do not follow the same approach. There is a 28-day cut-off threshold in Scotland after a positive test, after which a patient is not automatically considered dead from the virus.
Britain, one of the countries hard hit by the virus, reported more than 1,000 new COVID-19 infections on Sunday, its highest daily increase since June, taking the total number of cases past 310,000.
Report of Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru; Edited by Daniel Wallis
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