More than 150,000 people have died from coronavirus in the UK, according to a Guardian study.
The latest figures show that at least one in three recorded Covid-19 deaths have occurred in the last three months, with 54,445 deaths officially counted on death certificates in the UK since the beginning of 2021. It means that one in 445 people has died from the virus since the outbreak began.
Christina Pagel, professor of action research at University College London, said: “The death toll is not surprising given the strength of the second wave, but you can see nothing but a failure in public health policy. . There are countries that have far, far lower mortality rates, and it was not inevitable. We had more deaths in the second wave than we did in the first wave and that should not be true. ”
Second-wave death toll was higher, with 56,735 30-day deaths on both sides of the peak, compared with 44,235 in the same period during the first wave, according to UK death certificate figures from the Office for National Statistics. Coronavirus deaths hit a new peak in early January when 1,465 deaths were recorded across the UK on 19 January 2021, similar to the previous 1,459 daily death toll just over nine months earlier, on 8 April 2020.
Pagel said the government had risked another escalation in cases if it had not learned the lessons from previous waves. “We are already repeating some of these mistakes,” she said. “We have opened schools in the same conditions as we last opened them, and things are going up.
“What the government hopes is that vaccines will prevent reopening [of schools and hospitality], and they could. Just if they had done the things we should have done in terms of isolation, ventilation and keeping things down, we would have been in a much better position. At the moment we are completely reliant on our vaccination program, and as we are currently seeing that is very vulnerable to international procurement issues over which we have little control. ”
Pagel called on the government to do more to provide financial support to people in need of segregation and encourage better indoor ventilation practices to avoid further increases in Covid’s case rates.
The latest death toll stands at 150,011, according to a study by the Guardian. The latest figures from statistical organizations show that there were 149,207 deaths where Covid-19 was noted on the death certificate across the UK and a further 804 deaths since these records occurred, based on the government’s 28-day measure.
The manner in which deaths are measured and communicated has been widely dispersed throughout the pandemic. In the first months of 2020 the government set a metric counting any deaths where the individual had tested positive for the virus at any time in the past as coronavirus death. However, after concerns were raised about this approach, the standard procedure has been settled, where only people who have died within 28 days of a positive trial are included in a central government death tax. . That number is now at 126,573.
However, figures on the cause of death are usually based on what is recorded on the death certificate, which is published by the three UK statistical organizations. The Defendant figure collects data on coronavirus deaths from the Office for National Statistics, National Records of Scotland and the Northern Ireland Audit and Research Agency by date of death. The figure is then topped by adding the latest government coronavirus death numbers that have occurred since the previous statistical release.
Deaths due to Covid-19 have been falling in England and Wales since February, according to figures from the ONS. 1,501 Covid deaths were recorded in the week to March 12, a 29% decline on the previous week.
Professor David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Center for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, said: “This is a tough milestone, placing us among the worst in the world. But deaths are now running below the five-year average: this is partly due to a mild winter, the expected lack of flu, and the fact that many people who would have died otherwise would have died. ‘died when the first wave hit old and vulnerable, especially in care homes. The current death toll represents the shadow of those raised early. ”
Additional deaths, which count the number of deaths from all causes above the previous five-year average, indicate that deaths in hospitals and care homes have fallen below the average in the latest numbers. However, deaths in private households remain high, with the number of deaths at home in England and Wales 30% above the average for the week to March 12, according to figures from the ONS.