What do excess deaths tell us about Covid?

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.