Covid-19 death toll reaches more than 3,800 in Derbyshire

THE current Derbyshire death toll of the coronavirus pandemic has been revealed in figures from the Office of National Statistics.

The data shows there have been 3,838 deaths registered in the county where Covid has been mentioned on the death certificate as the cause or contributing factor.

That is 13 per cent of all deaths that have occurred since the start of 2020, compared to 12 per cent across England and Wales.

Of the deaths involving Covid, 1,857 took place in 2020, while 1,565 occurred in 2021 – with high death rates seen in the early part of the pandemic and also in early 2021 as the Alpha variant spread quickly.

The vaccine programme and the prominence of weaker variants has seen the number of deaths involving Covid slow down, with 416 in Derbyshire so far in 2022.

Most deaths involving Covid took place in hospitals, 2,464 in

Derbyshire since the start of the pandemic. There were 888 deaths in care homes over the pandemic.

There were also 255 deaths recorded at home, 208 in hospices, four in other communal establishments, and 19 elsewhere.

Other communal establishments include prisons, halls of residence, hotels, and sheltered accommodation, while elsewhere covers deaths outside and people declared dead on arrival at hospital.

Across the UK, 200,247 deaths involving Covid had been recorded by July 1. Of those, 169,869 deaths were in England, 14,988 were in Scotland, 10,419 were in Wales, and 4,672 were in Northern Ireland. There were also a small number of registrations where the location is unknown.

The rate at which deaths have occurred has slowed. The first 50,000 deaths happened between the start of 2020 and May 22, 2020, just under five months, with 100,000 marker reached by January 6, 2021, just over seven months later. It took just two months to reach 150,000 deaths, by March 8, 2021, as daily deaths rose to the highest levels of the pandemic in mid-January last year. Since then the impact of the vaccination programme means that it has taken 16 months for a further 50,000 people to die from the virus, with the number passing 200,000 as of June 25.