And so it starts to unravel

My daughter was very ill in January before we knew about covid. She had two lots of antibiotics to clear a very bad chest infection. Then in Feb I had to cancel two dental appointments because I had a bad cough, sore chest etc., have we had covid? How can we know.

The statistics could be wrong in either direction. Too many deaths recorded as due to coronavirus as the person died with it not of it; but also many deaths, especially in care homes near the beginning, where the virus was not diagnosed.

I'v looked at the ONS figures again. These are for England and Wales alone.

In the period from w/e 13th March to w/e 3rd July there were 50,199 deaths registered with covid19 on the death certificate.

This does not include figures for NI or Scotland.

I think the review is more to do with Hancock trying to save his job or the Government's performance in responding to the outbreak.

I doubt if the numbers will change significantly if deaths after the 28-day cut-off point are recalculated.

There is probably no "perfect" method for counting deaths from the virus. If the virus causes other life-threatening complications which may not have arisen before the virus was caught then it is a death from the virus, however indirect that may seem. And maybe some of these complications arise more than 28 days later - I don't know.

I agree with Janetashbolt. The deaths from the virus figures are likely to be under - not over-stated. This is because of comparing them with the excess deaths figures for the same period in the last 5 years.

The Government was slow in deciding on the lockdown and carried on allowing people to fly in to the UK without quarantining them (apart from the cruise ship passengers) until last month - incredible! They even stopped working on a test and trace system prematurely, which suggests they thought they could contain the virus - how?

Trying to massage the deaths figures at this stage doesn't alter the fact that their response to the outbreak has been lamentable.

Bluebellwould

Absolutely agree with you. My son definitely had it in January but he’s not in any statistics anywhere. The whole country could have had it and no one will ever know, so we could all have been isolating for nothing. I’m still not going out though!

Sure I had it in January too, I remember an irritating cough and a struggle to breathe and I'm not in any statistics...yet.

How can anyone on here say we may have masses of immunity and locked down for nothing? All the research using antibody tests show few of us have had it and immunity appears to wane even in the those who have...

I’m glad they are getting to the bottom of the numbers , important learning for the future etc. Whatever ... I still have a tear every day for those lost to Covid and for the grieving friends and families. Going forwards there are such important lessons and ways to make lives better. Ever hopeful. ?. Keep safe

Seasonal Flu counts for a lot of deaths each year. Have these been lumped in with the CV statistics?

Not at all surprised - have been saying so!
More too will unravel, just wait and see.

Was talking to a friend this morning who has terminal cancer and her husband is quite ill at the moment and needing to be seen. Her current encounters with GP & Hospital care makes me lost for words!

If we cannot agree on the method of accounting for the deaths in the UK then how can we make any comparison with other countries using other criteria and staff who had been trained differently? We cannot assume a common standard of training
I ended up with pneumonia after visitors from the Far East in December. What was the cause of this? No-one told me but then there was little interest before China started notifying people of what had happened there.

German death certificates do include a cause of death.

However, they are in two parts. The first part, handed to relative, doesn't include the cause of death.

The second part does list a cause of death and is given to the regional authorities.

So the family isn't officially told the cause of death, but the authorities know.

www.dimdi.de/dynamic/en/classifications/icd/icd-10-who/causes-of-death-statistics/

I know of someone here in Scotland whose nephew and his friend died in a car accident both in their 20's in April. Their deaths were put down as Covid, also a few people who had heart attacks, no Covid symptoms whose deaths were put down as Covid. As no post mortems were being done, every death was put as Covid.

Why is anyone surprised, it was always an exercise in the use and abuse of statistics? No two countries have counted deaths in the same way. If one has a condition such as cancer then anything that interacts with that can have a detrimental effect.

Yet again, I’ll say, look at our excess death figures ie deaths from all causes.These are incredibly accurate as the ONS produces these figures from actual death certificates. I doubt there are any deaths registered where in fact nobody died. Because of things like seasonal flu where death rates vary from year to year, the ONS allows for this by calculating excess deaths on a rolling 5 year average which irons out yearly differences. Our excess death rate is about 65, 000. The
majority of these are COVID related although some will be due to not getting necessary health care because of COVID. These figures I’d guess will grow over time especially for deaths from cancers. There is no way that our excess death figures can be explained away in the hope of proving that our deaths from COVID aren’t as bad as painted. If you think the ONS is part of an anti Government conspiracy then I recommend the sterling journalism of the FT on this as well

Deaths for the last 3 weeks released have been lower than the 5 year rolling average, which would indicate that some people that should have been dying now have already died, probably either as a result of contracting covid19 or because their health care was impacted by the pandemic. A&E doctors are very concerned about the drop in numbers of people presenting with urgent acute conditions ie heart attacks etc
Growstuff you said It could be because there's more testing in France but France (as of today) quote just over 2.6 million tests in total against 13.1 million tests for the UK. Even deducting the postal tests sent out that haven't been returned the UK is still conducting vastly more tests than France

I'm not disputing our death figures at all, but do wonder why we as a country that never ran over capacity for ITU beds seemingly have a worse death rate than some countries with much poorer health care facilities.

All I can say is that I am very very disappointed in our Government and its handling of the whole thing. There has been mixed messages, and whether the figures are right or wrong a lot of people have died. I am grateful for the lockdown as I felt I was kept safe but now we are being told that everything will be back to normal and I do feel quite scared that all our hard work will be for nothing. And no doubt the statistics will keep rolling in and we will still be debating whether they are right or wrong.

Along with heart attacks, cancers and strokes as well as sudden deaths at home too---all must have been counted with Covid.

It's never coincidental that many die in many parts of the country from any of the above in any one day.

We let many die in care homes who never went near a hospital - that’s how we managed, we threw care homes under the bus. Didn’t we do well ?

Figures from ONS

Place of death for care home residents

Of deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) among care home residents (date of death from 2 March to 12 June 2020, registered up to 20 June 2020), 74.9% (14,519 deaths) occurred within a care home, with the remainder occurring in hospitals (24.8%) or elsewhere (0.3%). Of all hospital deaths involving COVID-19, 15.5% were accounted for by care home residents.

If someone is 99+ and they catch a cold, they could die the next day or they may not have woken up the next day regardless. Vera Lynn seemed very healthy a few weeks ago and now she's gone. It's called old age. I expect there are many covid related deaths attributed to the same age group.

My whole family were very ill in late February /early March. I had a hacking cough and stayed in bed for 3 days, I thought I had cracked a rib, I coughed so much and each cough hurt so much. On the 4th day I rose up but felt weak for a few weeks afterwards and others in my family coughed and were rough for weeks too. Was that covid or just a bad cold!

It doesn’t matter for the purposes of number of deaths qq does it as you are still alive. The issue of how many people have been infected is another issue but so far, anti bodies testing is showing low levels of immunity.

suziewoozie - you seem to put a lot of faith in ONS figures?
I worked with statistical data related to the GP/NHS side of things. My opinion is different - I say no more!

I haven't read all the posts because they are so sad, so, apologies if you have already said this. The simplest way to measure Covid related deaths is to look at the stats in every country for 'excess deaths'. That way, we would all be using the same measure, and comparisons between nations would be more valid. for everyone who has suffered Covid loss.

Then nanny I’ll take no notice of your silly nudge nudge wink wink post. ONS excess death figures are accurate and its excess death figures that are the key to this.