Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
UK second only to Spain with soaring excess death rate
THE UK has recorded the second highest rate of excess deaths during the outbreak.
The 60,000 extra deaths – compared to the average for previous years – puts the UK only behind Spain in the list of 19 nations which have collected comprehensive data.
It shows the virus has directly or indirectly killed 891 people per million in the population, compared to 921 deaths per million in Spain.
The absolute number of excess deaths in the UK is the highest in Europe, and second only to the US in global terms.
The timing of lockdowns appears to have had a significant effect on excess deaths.
Countries like Germany and Norway, which imposed restrictions early, had far lower rates.
Jonathan Ashworth, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, said: “We were too slow into lockdown, off the pace on testing and PPE, and too slow to protect our care homes.”
Other countries like China, Brazil and Russia have suffered large death tolls but their mortality rates are far below the UK as the number of deaths is smaller compared with their much larger populations.
The UK fares no better on another measure: the percentage increase in deaths compared with normal levels, where the UK once again is the worst hit in Europe and behind only Peru internationally.
Sir David Spiegelhalter, risk expert at Cambridge University, said: “If we can believe data from other countries, then the UK has done badly in terms of excess deaths. The issues now concern what will happen for the rest of the year, and trying to understand the processes contributing to our large excess.”
A Government spokesman said it was “wrong and premature” to draw conclusions at this stage and that excess deaths estimates should be adjusted for the age of each population. He added: “We will, of course, learn lessons from our response to this virus, but these must be drawn from an accurate international analysis in the future.”