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Comment on the number of deaths where COVID-19 is mentioned in England, Scotland, and Wales.
Prof Sheila Bird, Formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, said:
“Tracking COVID-mention deaths by week of occurrence matters. During Wave 3 to the week ending 12th Dec 2021, Scotland had experienced 2,250 COVID-mention deaths (nearest 50). Thereafter, booster vaccines and Omicron competed to control COVID-related mortality but a further 1,150 COVID-mention deaths (nearest 50) occurred in Wave 4 to end February 2022 when deaths were again increasing to a likely higher peak than for Omicron BA.1, see Table 1.
“Epidemiological week is defined slightly differently for England & Wales, see Table 2. Although death-registrations are less timely in the UK outside of Scotland, this week’s ONS report on COVID-mention deaths by occurrence-date in E&W already evidences their significant rise for E&W in the week ended 18 March 2022 (see Table 2) as forewarned by ONS Infection Survey (see Table 3).
“For whatever reason (more susceptible after wave of Omicron BA.1; older-age-specific susceptibility to Omicron BA.2 implicated; or possible role of ancestral haplotypes that are more prevalent in Scotland, Wales & Northern Ireland in severity of Omicron BA.2), Omicron BA.2 has hit 40% harder in Scotland (thus far) when compared with either of: a) Omicron BA.1 in Scotland or b) Omicron BA.2 in England & Wales, see Table 3.”
Table 1 for Scotland: all ages
Table 2 for England & Wales: all ages
Table 3: Variant-specific peaks in percent testing positive for SARS-CoV-2, as reported by ONS Community Infection Survey on 25 March 2022.
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
None received.