Assessing the number of Covid deaths has been notoriously difficult throughout the pandemic. Over the summer, English figures were revised down by more than 5,000 after researchers at Oxford University discovered a flaw in the way Public Health England was registering deaths. Another route for assessing the mortality of Covid is to look at excess deaths — while comparing this year’s deaths to previous years is a blunt instrument, it is also in some ways more reliable. We may not know the reason for death but we know that more are occurring.
Tuesday’s release by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) looking at weekly registered deaths in England and Wales painted a bleak picture. From the week of 9 November (week 46), the ONS recorded 12,254 deaths, which it said was 1,904 — or 18.4 per cent — above the average of the past five years.
However, this figure does not tell us the full story.
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