Models that led to curbs got it wrong as deaths were already falling, says scientist

DEATH rates from Covid fell significantly in December while the Government was deciding whether to bring in new restrictions, figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show.

Monthly mortality data from the ONS show that there were 56.3 deaths per 100,000 last month with Covid on the death certificate in England compared with 69.3 per 100,000 in November.

Separate ONS and King’s College infection data also show cases are now declining in most areas of Britain.

Experts said it was clear that Britain would not experience the thousands of daily deaths modelling scenarios showed, and said lessons should be learnt from how the omicron variant was dealt with before Christmas. Prof James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, at the University of Oxford, said: “Given the immunity in the population from vaccination and the progress of the booster, we were very unlikely to see deaths spiral to thousands a day. It was not impossible but the low probability should have been more clearly communicated.

“Partial travel bans, once a variant of concern is detected, serve only PR purposes. Modelling is vital but can only ever present a range of future scenarios. The science community needs to find a better way to explain this.”

In Wales, the Covid death rate was significantly below the five-year average for flu and pneumonia at 59.3 cases per 100,000 compared with 73.2 per 100,000.

Of the 49,428 deaths registered in December, 5.4 per cent were because of Covid compared with 6.6 per cent in November. The provisional figures show Covid was the leading cause of death in England last year with 113.8 deaths per 100,000 people, with the second being dementia and Alzheimer’s.