February 8, 2022

expert reaction to ONS stats on deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional: week ending 28 January 2022

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 28 January 2022.

Prof Paul Hunter, Professor in Medicine, UEA, said:

“We now have ONS reported deaths data for the first 4 weeks of 2022 and there are some interesting observations.

“Firstly total deaths from all causes are lower than the average for 2015 to 2019 so we are not seeing more deaths so far this year than we would expect for this month in the years before covid.

“Secondly in the four weeks before Christmas there were actually more deaths reported on death certificates, 3163, compared to 2890 that were reported on the UK daily dashboard for England and Wales combined.  In the first four weeks of 2022 there were 5173 deaths reported on death certificates compared to 6140 on the daily dashboard.  So in an increasing proportion of deaths within 28 days of a positive covid test, the certifying doctor has not considered covid to have contributed to the cause of death.  These figures are based on date reported, not date of death so will be less biased by time to report delays that can affect recent data based on date of death.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending28january2022

All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:

www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.