Thirteen people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England today, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 29,173.
NHS England said this afternoon the patients were aged between 46 and 96 years old and all had known underlying health conditions.
But full figures will not be published today for the first time during the crisis after Matt Hancock ordered a review into claims by academics the number of coronavirus deaths recorded in the UK during the pandemic had been exaggerated.
Oxford University experts have claimed the Government’s official count of COVID-19 deaths has been inflated and fewer than 40 people per day are now dying.
They say that the way officials count the death of anyone who has previously tested positive for coronavirus – even if it is months ago – gives a misleading picture.
A message on the Government’s website said: ‘Currently the daily deaths measure counts all people who have tested positive for coronavirus and since died, with no cut-off between time of testing and date of death.
Thirteen people who tested positive for coronavirus have died in hospital in England today, bringing the total number of confirmed deaths in hospitals to 29,173
The announcement posted on the Department for Health website regarding death statistics
Dr Loke’s analysis shows that ‘all settings’ deaths (red bar) remain very high in England even as hospital deaths (blue bar) – which the Office for National Statistics says should make up two thirds of the total – have plummeted
Data shows that the trend of deaths charted by when they actually happened (dotted blue line), not when the paperwork was finished, is significantly lower than the number of deaths being announced by the Department of Health (red line)
‘There have been claims that the lack of cut-off may distort the current daily deaths number. We are therefore pausing the publication of the daily figure while this is resolved.’
Dr Jason Oke and Professor Carl Heneghan said figures from Public Health England – which have been published each day by the Department of Health – contained ‘inaccuracies’ and could cause confusion.
Deaths are still falling, the professors said, even if at a slower rate than they were earlier in the crisis.
The Government has pointed out in the past that it counts deaths on the date that the paperwork is completed, not when the person actually died, which can make day-by-day figures inaccurate. Numbers are particularly low at the weekends and on bank holidays.
Dr Oke and Professor Heneghan said the Government should make it clearer when people actually died so that when there are one-day spikes – the 138 deaths announced on Tuesday, for example – it doesn’t look like the outbreak is getting worse.
Writing in a blog Dr Oke and Professor Heneghan said: ‘What has become apparent in recent weeks is the growing disparity between the numbers released by ONS [Office for National Statistics] and those reported by Public Health England which are widely disseminated in the media.’
They said PHE’s figures ‘vary substantially from day to day’ and explained: ‘This variation is most likely due to the appearance of ‘historic’ deaths that have occurred weeks before, but for some reason unknown to us, get reported in batches on particular days.
‘To counter this variation, a moving average smooths the trend, but even this is at odds with the ONS data…
‘We can surmise that the total number of deaths in all settings is approximately 40 per day, much closer to the ONS numbers.’
To explain their calculations Dr Oke and Professor Heneghan, from the university’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, compared death tolls recorded by Public Health England (PHE) and the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
PHE counts only deaths in people who tested positive for Covid-19, which means it is thought to have missed out thousands of people at the start of the epidemic.
The ONS, meanwhile, counts anyone who has the disease mentioned on their death certificate, whether they were tested or not.
Dr Oke and Professor Heneghan said even PHE’s moving average, which is intended to smooth out dips and spikes around the weekends, is too high.
It was 103 for June 30, they pointed out, but the ONS counted 101 deaths (by actual date of death) on June 30 and July 1 combined – making the two-day average 51.
They said: ‘The PHE figures average has been consistently higher than ONS for some time.’
The pair also pointed out the death counts from NHS England, which are accurate around three days after the date in question, are too low to match PHE.
According to the ONS, hospital fatalities now make up around 60 per cent of all deaths that happen on any given day.
On June 30, NHS England recorded 27 fatalities. If this was 60 per cent of all deaths that happened on that day the total number would be 45.
The official daily death counts announced to the public have ‘inaccuracies’ and don’t actually reflect the present day, statisticians say
ONS data shows that significantly more people have died than the Department of Health has counted. This is thought to be largely because it only counted people who tested positive but wouldn’t let care home residents have tests during the peak of the outbreak
But the Department of Health, using PHE’s data, announced 115 more deaths on that day.
Professor Heneghan and Dr Oke acknowledged that the official death counts are constantly backdating deaths so do not reflect the day they’re announced, but suggest that historic fatalities are being spread out.
‘Because of the inaccuracies in PHE data we recommend using ONS data and the NHS England data to understand the trends in deaths over time,’ they wrote.
‘To reduce confusion we require all deaths reported by PHE to include when they occurred as opposed to the day of reporting.’
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: ‘We have been completely up front about how this information is being presented, and it is misleading to suggest that there are discrepancies or inaccuracies in the data.
‘These data sources are all subject to time lags in reporting, and DHSC and PHE have been clear that figures reported at weekends are sometimes lower for that reason.’