LONDON (AP) – The British government on Wednesday changed the way it kills coronavirus, a move that reduced the country’s official death toll by more than 5,000.
The health department said the new total is 41,329, down from 46,706.
That is still the highest death toll in Europe.
The government announced last month that it was the way to check on death statistics, after academics pointed out that in England everyone included anyone who tested positive for COVID-19 and later died, with no cut-off point between positive test and death.
This means that some people are listed as coronavirus deaths may have died to other causes – and that the proportion will increase over time.
That could explain why England showed much higher daily death rates than Scotland, which only counts deaths that occur within 28 days of a positive test.
Public Health England said on Wednesday it would also adopt a 28-day cut-off date, bringing it in line with the rest of the UK. People who die more than 28 days after testing positive, but less than 60 days, will only be added to the total if COVID-19 appears on their death certificate.
Public Health England said it made the change after discovering that “in recent weeks the number of deaths in people who tested positive has increased substantially more than the number of deaths later registered as COVID-19 deaths “by the Office for National Statistics, which uses death certificates to maintain them.
The change highlights the difficulty of comparing causes of death among countries that use different calculation methods.
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