Coronavirus UK: Death toll hits 41,000 with 245 new fatalities

Britain’s coronavirus death toll today jumped by 245 as Northern Ireland recorded no new fatalities for the fourth day in a row with the outbreak across the UK continuing to fade. 

Department of Health figures show the official number of victims has now topped 41,000 but other grim statistics yesterday revealed the actual number of deaths is closer to the 51,000-mark. 

The number of daily lab-confirmed Covid-19 fatalities is 31.7 per cent lower than the 359 recorded last Wednesday and down slightly on the 286 registered yesterday. 

Analysis of figures today revealed at least 1,000 deaths involving Covid-19 took place in the UK for 22 days in a row in April, with the number of fatalities peaking on April 8 (1,441). 

Government statistics released this afternoon also showed only 1,003 more cases were diagnosed, in the lowest daily figure since lockdown was imposed on March 23 (967). And Boris Johnson tonight revealed only 443 people were admitted to hospital in England, Wales and Northern Ireland with Covid-19 on June 7, down from a peak of 3,431 on April 1.

In other coronavirus developments in Britain today: 

• Professor Lockdown’ Neil Ferguson told MPs that Britain’s death toll would have been halved if draconian measures were introduced just one week earlier;
• Ministers faced fury after it emerged millions of children may not be able to go back to school full-time in September, despite zoos and drive-in cinemas opening from Monday;
• Statistics revealed school children under the age of 15 have a ‘tiny’ one-in-3.5million chance of dying from coronavirus — and are actually ‘much’ more likely to be hit by lightning;
• Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned school closures are as damaging to the economy as the 2008 credit crunch and is among the most hawkish in government on the need to reopen classrooms, it was claimed today;
• Riots could break out across Britain this summer because of the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and growing concerns over racial inequality, a government scientific adviser warned. 

Department of Health data released today showed that 170,379 tests were carried out yesterday, a figure that included antibody tests for frontline NHS and care workers.

But bosses again refused to say how many people were tested, meaning the exact number of Brits who have been swabbed for the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a mystery since May 22.

Other data released by the Department of Health and presented at last night’s Downing Street press conference showed 1,003 more people tested positive for Covid-19. 

It means the official size of the UK’s coronavirus outbreak now sits at 290,143 cases but the true scale of the crisis is estimated to be in the millions. 

The daily data does not represent how many Covid-19 patients died within the last 24 hours — it is only how many fatalities have been reported and registered with the authorities.

The data does not always match updates provided by the home nations. For example, the Scottish government today announced 12 deaths – but the DH’s geographical breakdown showed it had seven deaths, which is the same amount it confirmed yesterday.

The Department of Health has a different time cut-off, meaning daily updates from Scotland as well as Northern Ireland are always out of sync. Wales is not thought to be affected.

NHS England today recorded 88 lab-confirmed Covid-19 deaths in hospitals. Scotland registered 12 victims in all settings, followed by nine in Wales and zero in Northern Ireland.

The official Department of Health breakdown of the 245 deaths shows that 229 occurred in England, followed by nine in Wales and seven in Scotland. 

Separate figures compiled by the statistical bodies of each of the home nations show that the real death toll, when suspected Covid-19 fatalities are included on top of confirmed cases, is around 51,000 in the UK. 

Data released by the National Records of Scotland (NRS) today showed the number of people who have died with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 north of the border has now hit 4,000.

But the number of coronavirus deaths has fallen for a sixth consecutive week and the proportion of Covid-19 fatalities in Scotland’s care homes has fallen below 50 per cent for the first time since mid-April.

The NRS figures show there were 89 deaths related to Covid-19 registered between June 1 and 7, a decrease of 42 from the previous seven days (131) and the sixth consecutive weekly drop.  

The figures are published weekly and account for all fatalities registered in Scotland when Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate.

They differ from the lab-confirmed coronavirus deaths announced daily by the Scottish Government using Health Protection Scotland (HPS) figures because they include suspected or probable cases of Covid-19. 

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon this afternoon revealed a total of 2,434 Covid-19 patients have now died in the country after testing positive for the virus, up 12 from 2,422 on Tuesday.  

It comes as statistics last night showed school children under the age of 15 have a ‘tiny’ one in 3.5million chance of dying from coronavirus and are more likely to be hit by lightning.

Office for National Statistics (ONS) data published yesterday revealed only 14 people aged under 19 in England or Wales have died with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 since the start of the outbreak.

Sir David Spiegelhalter, an eminent statistician at the University of Cambridge, calculated the risk of dying from Covid-19 for under-5s was one in 1.17million. It was one in 3.5million for children aged five to 14.  

In comparison, between 30 and 60 people are hit by lightning every year in the UK, according to figures from the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. 

This is a risk of between one in 2.21million and one in 1.1million each year, the Daily Telegraph reported, although it was unclear how many people hit by lightning are children. 

The UK faces the biggest hit from coronavirus of any major economy with GDP estimated to nosedive by 11.5 per cent this year, an international think-tank warned today.

For comparison, the OECD’s latest estimates predict GDP will drop by 11.4 per cent in France and 11.3 per cent in Italy.

The crash could be even worse if there is a second peak of the deadly disease, with output likely to be down 14 per cent overall in 2020.

The grim picture — in line with the Bank of England’s fears of the worst recession in around 300 years — came in the OECD’s update on the global economic outlook.

School children under the age of 15 have a very low chance of dying from coronavirus, according to statistics

The body says the world’s GDP is set to contract by 6 per cent, with all countries suffering a deep downturn and struggling to recover quickly.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak today warned school closures are a ‘tragedy’ amid claims he has told fellow MPs they are as damaging to the economy as the 2008 credit crunch. 

He has privately told colleagues the impact of keeping millions of pupils at home is the same scale as the financial crisis, which required nearly £140billion in taxpayer bailouts, according to the Telegraph.

Treasury sources dismissed the report as ‘categorically not true’. Speaking on a visit to a John Lewis store this morning, Mr Sunak said: ‘I personally think every day our children are not at school is a tragedy.

‘It is obviously going to have an impact on their futures.’ But he added: ‘We can’t do it all in one go. We have to take careful measures, deliberate steps, to do it.’ 

With concerns rising about the long-term impact, ministers are facing fury that millions of children might not be able to go back to school full-time in September, despite zoos and drive-in cinemas opening from Monday. 

It was also revealed that Boris Johnson is facing a Tory backlash for failing to downgrade the two-metre social distancing rule amid warnings it is causing ‘economic devastation’.

The Prime Minister is coming under growing pressure to relax the instruction, which is hampering the return of schools and crippling swathes of he economy.

Senior Conservatives are increasingly furious, with some branding the premier’s leadership on the issue ‘pitiful’. Ministers have argued the guidance is kept under review but needs to stay in place for now. 

However, there are claims that the government is preparing a shift in approach next month when pubs are due to get the go-ahead to open gardens.

SAGE adviser Shaun Fitzgerald of Cambridge University, who helped draw up the rule, told the Times that there should be more focus on how long people are close together any whether they are facing towards each other.

How many people have died of Covid-19 in YOUR area? Interactive tool shows rate of ‘excess deaths’, when the crisis peaked and how badly care homes and hospitals have been hit in every part of England and Wales

Scientists have created an interactive graphic which reveals how different areas of England and Wales have been affected by the coronavirus.

Damning statistics yesterday revealed that more than 51,000 people have died with Covid-19 across the UK since the outbreak began in February. 

But not all areas have been hit equally hard. More than 1,000 have died in Birmingham, England’s second biggest city, whereas none at all died on the tiny Isles of Scilly off the coast of Cornwall.

Now researchers at the University of Cambridge have compiled data from the Office for National Statistics into an interactive module that the public can use to track deaths in England and Wales over the past six months.

They show the numbers of people dying each week surged well above average between the end of March and beginning of May as the virus swept through the UK, killing tens of thousands of elderly people and those with serious health conditions, as well as healthy citizens and children.

The data revealed that more than 13,000 people died of Covid-19 in care homes up to May 29, along with another 11,000 unexplained ‘excess’ deaths which experts believe may largely have been undiagnosed coronavirus.

A further 28,000 people died in NHS hospitals of the coronavirus, while people dying on wards of other causes dropped dramatically by around 10,000 amid suggestions Brits were too scared to seek medical care. 

At the same time, however, some 2,000 people have died at home with Covid-19, along with nearly 12,000 people who died in private homes of other causes. Many of those would have likely been hospital patients in normal times, the researchers said.

Here’s how to use the module: 

• First select the area you want to look at – it can be England and Wales, either country individually, or a local authority within one of the nations;
• Select the data set: ‘occurrences’ is the most accurate because it counts the day someone actually died, while ‘registrations’ is the day on which they were counted, which usually comes days or even weeks later; 
• Baseline: The difference between the two options is minimal. Baseline is the average number of deaths against which this year’s figures are compared. They are collected from the past five years. The ‘five year average’ is the true average, and ‘adjusted’ is what would have been expected without the pandemic, adjusting the five-year average using the number of deaths in the first 10 weeks of this year;
• Select time frame: Using the ‘start week’ and ‘stop week’ drop-down menus you can choose which date range to look at. The first coronavirus death in England happened on March 2, according to NHS England. Any time periods before March will not show any Covid-19 fatalities, but they are useful for comparing how the numbers rose.

The data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the most accurate for England and Wales because it takes into account everyone who has Covid-19 mentioned on their death certificate, whether they were diagnosed with the virus or not.

This means it includes people who were not tested before they died, meaning the number of deaths is higher than that announced by the Department of Health because the Government only tested hospital patients between March and the end of April.

Statistics show that Birmingham has had by far the most coronavirus deaths in hospitals, with 799, along with Leeds (359), Liverpool (354) and the London borough of Brent (350).

County Durham and Sheffield experienced the most Covid-19 deaths in care homes, with 304 and 260, respectively, although the researchers noted Durham has the third highest rate of care home deaths in normal times.

A five-fold surge in care home deaths happened in Islington, London, where 84 people died compared to the average of 16, while the number of people dying at home in Newham, in the east of the city, rose eight-fold from 16 to 141.

Dr Harry Giles and Professor David Spiegelhalter, the statisticians who created the interactive, pointed out the ‘notable’ local authorities above but said: ‘We deliberately avoid creating “league tables”, as chance variability can produce spurious rankings.’

Britain’s coronavirus death yesterday jumped by 286 to an official total 40,883. 

Northern Ireland has now gone three days in a row without recording a single fatality as the outbreak there continues to fade. 

Department of Health figures showed 277 of the Covid-19 victims were from England, while the other nine were in Wales. No laboratory-confirmed deaths were recorded in Scotland and Northern Ireland. 

But separate grim statistics suggest the disease has already claimed at least 51,000 lives in the UK. 

Other data shows nearly 64,000 ‘excess deaths’ have already been recorded across the home nations since the outbreak spiralled out of control in March.

Data compiled by the statistical bodies of each of the home nations show 51,086 people died of either confirmed or suspected Covid-19 across the UK by the end of May.

The real number of victims will be even higher because the tally only takes into account deaths that occurred up until May 31 in Scotland and May 29 in the rest of Britain, meaning it is up to 10 days out of date.

The Office for National Statistics on Tuesday confirmed that 46,421 people in England and Wales died with confirmed or suspected Covid-19 by May 29.

The total number of coronavirus deaths was 754 by the same date in Northern Ireland, according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA).

National Records Scotland — which collects statistics north of the border — said 3,911 people had died across the country by May 31.

Their tallies are always 10 days behind the Department of Health (DH) because they wait until as many fatalities as possible for each date have been counted, to avoid having to revise their statistics.

By comparison, the DH announces deaths for each day as soon as it receives them, meaning they are continuously updated as more registrations filter through the system.

Because of this recording lag, the number of deaths announced on any date is significantly higher by the time the ONS has calculated it. 

The difference between the statistics agencies’ total and the Department of Health total for May 29 is around 33.8 per cent (51,074 compared to 38,161).

If the most recent death toll announced by the government was increased by the same amount it would mean that there have already been 54,100 Covid-19 victims who died. 

Data released by the ONS, the statistical body for England and Wales, also showed weekly deaths in the seven-day spell ending May 29 plummeted to the lowest rate all year. 

Only 9,824 deaths were registered in the two countries that week — still 1,600 deaths higher than what would usually be expected. 

Both England and Wales — which suffered 16,000 deaths during the darkest fortnight of the crisis in April — are now en route to the way they were before the unprecedented lockdown was imposed on March 23.

The ONS figures also showed less than a fifth of deaths registered in the week ending May 29 in England and Wales involved coronavirus — the lowest proportion since when lockdown was imposed on March 23.   

It is also the first time the proportion of weekly Covid-19 deaths has fallen to under a fifth since the week lockdown was imposed, the week ending March 27, when the virus accounted for 5 per cent of the deaths.

While numbers are falling, there have been tens of thousands of ‘excess’ deaths compared to the average number of deaths over five years for the same period. 

The total number of excess deaths has passed 63,500, with Tuesday’s figures showing 57,961 excess deaths in England and Wales between March 21 and May 29 2020. 

Excess deaths are considered to be an accurate measure of the number of people killed by the pandemic because they include a broader spectrum of victims. 

As well as including people who may have died with Covid-19 without ever being tested, the data also shows how many more people died because their medical treatment was postponed, for example, or who didn’t or couldn’t get to hospital when they were seriously ill.

Nick Stripe, head of health analysis at the ONS, said some deaths involving coronavirus in care homes ‘will have brought forward deaths that might otherwise have happened relatively soon’.

He tweeted: ‘We might expect deaths not involving Covid in care homes to fall below 5-yr avgs (average) in the next few weeks.’