Excess deaths mystery ‘needs solving urgently’
CLARITY on the high number of post-pandemic excess deaths is needed “sooner rather than later”, the Office for National Statistics says.
Analysis of excess non-covid deaths over the past year suggests heart attacks, heart disease, diabetes and liver failure are the main causes.
The report by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities was released last week. But the reasons why death rates remain higher than normal are still unknown.
The ONS has launched a “cross-uk initiative” to examine the issue of excess deaths and how they are recorded.
It said: “We are aware of the importance of the topic and need for clarity sooner rather than later.”
However, it warned: “This work is not straightforward, but we are confident that we can deliver improved insight on excess deaths.”
The Government report comdeaths pared registered deaths since 2022 with the number of expected deaths based on the previous five-year average.
It found that for deaths registered in England during 2022, those involving four specific conditions were all more than 10 per cent higher than expected. These include heart failure (15 per cent higher), cirrhosis and other liver diseases (14 per cent), diabetes (12 per cent) and heart diseases (11 per cent).
The report states that the Government is “taking steps to help reduce excess deaths” and “consider what more can be done to improve the prevention, detection and diagnosis” of heart diseases.
And it says the NHS has a “clear vision” for recovering hospital treatments over the next three years as well as a “delivery plan” to improve ambulance times over the next two years.
However, it was criticised by some scientists who say the Government is failing to address why more people are dying of the four conditions that were highlighted.
Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, said: “The Government needs to understand why people are having more heart attacks and experiencing from heart disease and do more to prevent more deaths today. We cannot wait until next year or the year after.”
From May 2022 to January 2023 there have been 57,000 more deaths registered than the corresponding weeks across the five-year average of 2015-29.
This equates to at least 30,000 excess or “extra” deaths.
Professor Toby Green, coauthor of The Covid Consensus, has analysed global excess death figures.
He said: “An urgent investigation is required into what is causing this level of mortality, which has reached pandemic levels at some points over the past recent months.”
Tory MP Esther Mcvey, who recently wrote to health secretary Steve Barclay to urge him to launch an investigation, said: “People are rightly concerned about this issue.
“We need to understand what is driving these unexpected deaths.”