One in 10 ‘virus deaths’ was from other causes

NEARLY 10 per cent of coronavirus deaths reported by Public Health England were not related to the disease, the body has admitted.

The Department of Health has been urgently reviewing the way it records deaths after the University of Oxford noticed last month that former coronavirus patients were being included in mortality figures even if they had died of something else.

Yesterday the true extent of the problem emerged, when PHE published a report showing a total of 3,664 people, who had been included in 40,160 deaths from coronavirus in England, did not have Covid-19 on their death certificate.

It is also now clear that England’s death rate has been diminishing far faster than official figures showed. Since the middle of June, at least half of reported deaths have not been from coronavirus, and have now been excluded from official figures.

Experts said the figures explained why the daily death toll for England remained stubbornly high during June and July, in contrast to the other devolved nations and despite the Office for National Statistics showing that deaths were rapidly falling. The numbers have now been adjusted, and it appears that England may have had its first death-free day on Aug 6.

The issue has arisen in England because, unlike in Scotland and Wales, the death data does not have a 28-day cut off point.

Yesterday, the Government said it would publish the number of deaths that occurred within 28 days and 60 days in its daily total, after the four UK chief medical officers said a consistent measure should be adopted. Official

Government death figures have been paused since July 17 for investigation.

Prof John Newton, the PHE director of health improvement, said: “The way we count deaths in people with Covid-19 in England was originally chosen to avoid underestimating deaths caused by the virus in the early stages of the pandemic.

“Our analysis of the long-term impact of the infection now allows us to move to new methods, which will give us crucial information about both recent trends and overall mortality burden due to Covid-19.” The new data

‘The very old and those with severe underlying conditions are now dying from these conditions’

showed that the percentage of people included in the figures who did not die of coronavirus rose dramatically if they died after 28 days of being diagnosed.

For people who died within 29 to 42 days, around 27 per cent did not have Covid-19 on their death certificate. That rose to 70 per cent for those who died after 60 days of testing positive.

Keith Neal, emeritus professor of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said: “As Covid deaths fall the number of recovered patients, particularly the very old and those with severe underlying conditions are now dying from these conditions and not Covid-19.

“These non-covid deaths in survivors would become an ever-increasing percentage of the … deaths being reported. It had become essentially useless for epidemiological monitoring.”

The Government’s previous estimate for UK deaths was 46,526, but yesterday the Department of Health revised the figure to 41,329.