Quarter of virus deaths not caused by Covid
Calls to speed up roadmap as 23pc of recent deaths are ‘with’ disease rather than ‘from’ it
ALMOST a quarter of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease, official figures show, as the Government is urged to move faster with the roadmap in the light of increasingly positive data.
Latest figures from the Office for National Statistics show that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths registered are now those who have died “with” the virus rather than “from” an infection.
This means that while the person who died will have tested positive for Covid, that was not the primary cause of death recorded.
Other data show an increasingly positive picture of the state of the pandemic in the UK. Daily death figures by “date of death” show that Britain has had no more than 28 deaths a day since the beginning of the month, even though the Government announced deaths had been as high as 60. This is because the Government gives a daily update based on the number of deaths reported that day, which can include deaths from days or weeks previously and therefore may not reflect the true decline. Yesterday’s deaths total was 23.
Likewise, Oxford University has calculated that the number of people in hospital with an active coronavirus infection is likely to be around half of the published daily figure. Yesterday’s official figure showed there were 2,537 Covid patients in hospital, with 230 new admissions.
However, Boris Johnson yesterday urged caution over the lifting of lockdown as he said it was the restrictions, not the vaccine rollout, that predominantly had kept Covid numbers low. “It is very, very important for everybody to understand that the reduction in these numbers – in hospitalisations and in deaths and in infections – has not been achieved by the vaccination programme,” the Prime Minister said.
“People don’t, I think, appreciate that it’s the lockdown that has been overwhelmingly important in delivering this improvement in the pandemic and in the figures that we’re seeing.”
Mr Johnson cautioned that case numbers would rise in the coming weeks as people gathered in pub gardens and visited shops again, with No10 watching changes in the data. He added that “at the moment I can’t see any reason for us to change the roadmap, to deviate from the targets that we have set ourselves”.
Tory MPS yesterday privately noted that Mr Johnson’s comments on the vaccine rollout struck a more cautious note than those used by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in a letter to MPS.
In that letter, Mr Hancock said “it is because of the success of the vaccination rollout”, alongside falling infection cases and hospitalisations, that “we are able carefully to lift restrictions”.
Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish First Minister, yesterday brought forward the reopening of non-essential shops. The speeding up of her reopening timetable comes after Mark Drakeford, the First Minister of Wales, brought forward indoor mixing in Wales by a week.
MPS urged the Prime Minister to also be driven by the positive data.
Steve Baker, deputy chairman of the Covid Research Group of Tory MPS sceptical about lockdown, said: “We were promised the vaccine would break the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths. We’ve been told repeatedly it has done. So of course we’re looking to the Prime Minister to follow the data so that we can end the other harms that come with restrictions and lockdown.”
Covid deaths now make up just 4.9 per cent of deaths registered in England and Wales compared with 45 per cent in mid-january, according to the ONS.
Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: “I think this over-cautiousness can be overcome by using a data-driven approach.”
A senior government source played down any quickening of the pace of unlocking for England, stressing the current “earliest date” targets remained.
NEARLY half of UK cancer patients who caught Covid have died, a 50 per cent higher rate than counterparts in Europe, a study suggests.
Researchers found that British patients were less likely to receive cancer treatment during the pandemic, and less likely to be given the best lifesaving therapies once struck down with the virus.
The worse death rate also reflects the fact that British cancer sufferers tended to be less fit and healthy generally.
Published in the European Journal of Cancer, the study included 1,392 patients from the UK, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium and Germany, tracking their progress between Feb 27 and Sept 10 last year.
It found that 30 days after a Covid diagnosis, 40.34 per cent of the UK cancer patients had died, compared with 26.5 per cent of European patients.
After six months the proportion had risen to 47.6 per cent of the UK cohort, compared with 33.3 per cent of the European.
Scientists at Imperial College London blamed disastrous guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, which recommended pausing cancer treatment for many patients in order to stop them catching the virus in hospital. Subsequent analysis has shown that people in need of chemotherapy, immunotherapy and surgery fared better on average if they continued with treatment on the normal timetable, even if they caught Covid-19.
Dr David Pinato, who led the new study, said: “This is the first study showing UK cancer patients were more likely to die following a Covid-19 diagnosis compared with European patients.
“We knew the UK had one of the highest deaths rates from Covid-19. However, before Covid-19 the UK already lagged behind Europe in terms of cancer care, with the UK having lower survival rates from many cancers.
“We need to prioritise cancer patients in the UK, as this study suggests they are extremely vulnerable – more so than in many other countries.”
The researchers found equal proportions between Britain and EU of complicated Covid-19 cases, rates of intensive care admission and use of ventilation.
But British cancer patients were less likely to receive anti-covid-19 therapies, including corticosteroids, antivirals and interleukin-6 antagonists.
Dr Alessio Cortellini, who coauthored the paper, said: “UK cancer patients tended to be older than European patients, were more likely to be male, and have other conditions such as obesity or diabetes.
“All of these factors may have contributed to the increased mortality rate, and show why cancer patients should be prioritised for Covid-19 vaccination.”