UK did have a lower pandemic death rate than our neighbours

No-lockdown Swedes did even better, reveals WHO

BRITAIN has emerged from the pandemic with a lower rate of Covid deaths than similar European countries, a report revealed yesterday.

It comes despite suggestions by the Labour Party and other critics that the UK had fared worst on the continent.

The country’s excess deaths were actually lower than in Italy and Germany, analysis by the World Health Organisation (WHO) found.

Experts last night said those who had exaggerated the rates in Britain had been ‘trying to score political points’ by ‘misleading people and alarming them’.

The WHO report for the whole of 2020 and 2021 found there were 109 excess deaths per 100,000 people in the UK. This is lower than the 116 deaths per 100,000 in Germany, 133

‘Moved us down the league table’

deaths in Italy and 111 in Spain. Meanwhile, Sweden’s rate was found to be among the lowest, despite the country facing criticism for refusing to impose strict lockdowns.

The country averaged 56 excess deaths per 100,000.

Analysing excess deaths is a reliable measure as it looks at fatalities above those expected for a given year based on the long-term average.

That gives a better idea of the overall impact of the pandemic on deaths, regardless of how different countries record them. But on May 27 last year, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: ‘We have the worst death toll in Europe and tens of thousands of people have died unnecessarily.’

But that was misleading because it did not take into account the population of individual countries. In fact, the UK had only the 14th worst toll in Europe at the time.

And these latest WHO figures now show that Britain ranked 139th globally out of 194 countries for excess deaths over the two years.

Jamie Jenkins, ex-head of health analysis at the Office for National Statistics, said: ‘Now these [figures] have been released... they clearly show politicians trying to score political points halfway through the pandemic were misleading people and alarming them.

‘Germany was held up as the country to follow at the start of the pandemic... and the UK’s rate of excess deaths is better than Germany’s up until the end of last year.’

Paul Hunter, professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said: ‘Because of the success of the vaccine rollout, we have seen less excess mortality since then and that has moved us down the league table.’ The report shows there were about 14.9million excess deaths worldwide.

That is almost three times the 5.4million officially disclosed, suggesting some governments massively underreported the true toll.

The figure for excess deaths will include those who have died as a knock-on effect of Covid after being unable to access medical care.

Professor Jon Wakefield, professor of biostatistics at the University of Washington, who helped to compile the report, said: ‘Some of these deaths will not have been caused directly by Covid, and it is difficult to rank countries based on these figures.’

A Labour spokesman said: ‘The UK’s excess death rates during the first and second waves of Covid were higher than our European neighbours.

Tens of thousands of families lost loved ones, including from mistakes such as failing to throw a protective ring around care homes in the first wave.’