Almost a year after the statistics were first published, the country remains horrified by the daily total of Covid 19-related deaths. Meanwhile, we are rather less apt to notice other statistics related to harm and death, which may be an unintended by-product of the fight against Covid-19.
The Office of National Statistics’ (ONS) latest figures for the number of deaths related to alcohol-specific causes, published yesterday, received little attention. But they make for dreadful reading. There were 5460 such deaths in the first three quarters of 2020, a shocking rise of 16.4 per cent compared with the same nine-month period in 2019. This grim tally marks the highest number of deaths in the 20 years since alcohol death statistics have been kept in this way.
The figures alone don’t provide any insight as to why alcohol-related deaths rose so sharply – say whether it be down to people drinking because they were depressed, or whether it was more because they were unable to access the emergency healthcare they needed.
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