Deaths at home surge amid union rancour and cold snap
THE number of people dying at home has surged amid the ongoing ambulance strikes and hospital chaos, official data show.
A dispute over pay and working conditions has led to paramedics and nurses going on strike. Wait times for ambulances have hit record highs, some patients are being forced to wait outside A&E in ambulances, and reports of overwhelmed hospitals have been numerous.
People were told not to get drunk and to take “sensible steps” to keep themselves and others out of A&E by Prof Stephen Powis, the NHS medical director, when ambulance strikes took place in December. The public was also instructed to get to hospital by taxi if possible as only the most serious 999 calls would lead to an ambulance being dispatched. A strike by ambulance workers is also taking place today.
In the last week of December, the number of home death registrations in England and Wales was 36.9 per cent higher than the pre-pandemic average of 1,856. A total of 2,540 people died at home in that week, figures reveal. Just one per cent of the home deaths involved Covid-19. Overall, the number of excess deaths was up 20.1 per cent compared with the pre-covid average, with care home deaths up 20 per cent and hospitals up 15 per cent.
Extreme cold weather, NHS pressures and soaring flu infections are some of the reasons being blamed for the rise in excess deaths. One in 12 (8.27 per cent) of all deaths in the last week of last month were caused by flu or pneumonia, figures reveal, compared to 5.7 per cent the week before.
Flu and pneumonia are now involved in 22 per cent of all deaths.
Dr Veena Raleigh, senior fellow at The King’s Fund, said: “The numbers of deaths will be affected by a range of other factors including the cold weather spell in December, the availability of services including emergency care, and the continued effects of some patients’ healthcare needs going unmet during the pandemic.”
Sir David Spiegelhalter, emeritus professor of statistics at the University of Cambridge, said: “The increasing problems in access to NHS care are likely to have contributed.”