Covid disruption ‘is translating into deaths from other causes’

First Minister warns that Scotland is at ‘pivotal moment’ in pandemic as Covid cases hit daily high

DEATHS in Britain are above average for the sixth week running, as experts warned that the cost of disrupted healthcare and lockdowns may be starting to show in the figures.

A total of 10,372 deaths in England and Wales were registered in the week ending Aug 13, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is 14 per cent above the five-year average, but only 544 are because of Covid, with the majority the result of unknown causes.

Separate data from Public Health England suggests that heart disease, diabetes and cirrhosis are well above normal levels, with health experts concerned that conditions which were left untreated last year may have begun to claim lives.

Charities have consistently warned that a health time bomb was looming because people could not access appointments or operations at the height of the pandemic, while many stayed away because they did not want to burden the NHS or thought services were not running in lockdown.

Prof Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-based Medicine at Oxford University, said the Government should be worried about the persistence of the effect, and investigate what is causing the high non-covid mortality.

“I think we’re now seeing the effects of delayed and disrupted preventive care coming through,” he added.

Excess deaths have not been this high since the week ending February 19, when 2,182 extra deaths were registered, 18.8 per cent above the pre-2020 five-year average.

Although some of the increase can be explained by the recent rise in deaths involving Covid-19, most were not linked to coronavirus.

Health experts are also concerned about the number of excess deaths in private homes in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic, which now stands at 66,941, according to PA news agency.

It has been claimed that many of these were displaced from hospitals or care homes, but the rise in excess deaths suggests that is not the whole picture.

NICOLA STURGEON yesterday threatened to reimpose Covid restrictions if Scots do not limit “unnecessary” contacts with other people after announcing a record high number of new cases.

The First Minister said she “cannot completely rule out having to reimpose some restrictions” as 4,323 new cases were reported, the highest daily total since the pandemic started.

Speaking at a Covid media briefing, Ms Sturgeon warned Scots against “drifting back to normal” despite the vast majority of them being double vaccinated and everything, including nightclubs, having reopened.

The First Minister said “the collective solidarity of the Scottish people” meant that she was “confident” they would obey any new restrictions she imposed.

Her warning comes as she announced a judge-led public inquiry into the handling of the Covid pandemic in Scotland would start by the end of the year.

But Douglas Ross, the Scottish Tory leader, said: “Nicola Sturgeon’s lingering threat to impose more constraints on people’s lives is unjustifiable, given the success of Scotland’s and the UK’S vaccine scheme.

“The public want to move on but Nicola Sturgeon is unable or unwilling to give up the control she has had.”

Tracy Black, CBI Scotland’s director, warned that Scotland’s economic recovery depends on “learning to live with the virus.” She said: “That doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind, but neither does it mean returning to social and economic hibernation.

“What we need now is a balance that works to build public and business confidence in recovery.”

Ms Sturgeon’s announcement comes less than three weeks after Scotland’s “Freedom Day” on Aug 9, when most of the major legal restrictions introduced during the pandemic were scrapped, including the requirement to socially distance. But she warned that the number of new cases north of the Border had doubled in the past week and this could eventually translate into more hospital admissions and deaths.

“That also means that, if this surge continues, and if it accelerates, and if we start to see evidence of a substantial increase in serious illness as a result, we cannot completely rule out having to reimpose some restrictions,” she said.

“Of course, we hope not to have to do that and, if we did, we would be as limited and as proportionate as possible However, as has been the case throughout so far, and up until this point, what happens in the next few weeks will depend, to a large extent, on all of us.”

Ms Sturgeon insisted Scotland is now at a “fragile and potentially pivotal moment” in the pandemic and urged people to “firm up” on following “basic precautions”, arguing this could avoid the need for restrictions.

Among the measures she highlighted were keeping a “safe distance” from people in other households and limiting “the number of unnecessary contacts”.

Ms Sturgeon confirmed the Scottish public inquiry would examine the rash of care home deaths in the pandemic.