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NHS England have announced the latest number of deaths from COVID-19 in England, 14,829 in total and The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) have announced the latest reported figures for cases (124,743) of and deaths (16,509) from COVID-19 in the UK.
On the DHSC data for the UK:
Prof James Naismith, Director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute, and University of Oxford, said:
“Although we have clearly passed the peak of the announced hospital deaths in this first wave, 449 deaths can never be thought of as any other than very sad news. The UK has been one of the hardest hit countries in this first wave and we still have to add in deaths from care homes and wider community. It is urgent that we learn what can be applied here so we do better. I am concerned by a simplistic narrative regarding testing. Testing is only one part of an identify, track, trace, test and isolate scheme. This scheme has been very successfully implemented in South Korea. The other components of the scheme are vital to its success. The scheme is complex to implement and simply wishing away this complexity and pretending that the number of tests alone is key, is undesirable.
“Germany has clearly done better than the UK in this first wave but we have to careful to draw the correct conclusions. Germany locked down on March 22nd with a total of 94 deaths, the UK locked down on March 23rd with 335 deaths. This is a difference of almost two cycles of doubling. In Germany, it took from March 22nd to April 1st to go from 94 to 931 deaths. The UK hit 104 deaths on March 18th and 1019 deaths on March 28th. This 10 fold increase in 10 days has been seen everywhere where the virus is spreading widely. In the initial phase of the virus, the number of cases doubles every two to three days, a few days has a huge impact on the outcome. Germany may well have locked down, an effective means of suppressing the virus, earlier in its disease cycle than did the UK. This factor could explain a very large part of Germany’s success. I do think testing is very important and Germany has been the most efficient in Europe, identifying asymptomatic as well as ill individuals. Perversely, the success of the German testing regime may have misled us to mistake the higher German confirmed case numbers (24, 500 March 22nd) as indicating Germany was actually further ahead in its disease cycle, rather than these numbers simply being an accurate count of the infected people. The testing regime in the UK (5, 300 cases March 22nd) may have led us to underestimate the true number of cases and that in fact UK was actually further ahead than Germany in its disease cycle, (as the number of deaths would suggest). Reaching a definitive answer will take access to more data and further analysis. While we have things to learn from Germany, there is a real danger in focussing all our energy, resources and attention on one number, the daily number of tests that we miss other lessons.”
On the NHS England data for England:
Prof Carl Heneghan and Dr Jason Oke, Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences, University of Oxford, said:
“It is welcome to now see NHS England publishing the data by the date of death.
“The results continue to be consistent with our previous analyses, the peak day of deaths was the 8th of April. The structure of the data is similar across the regions, with the peak in London on the 4th of April, four days ahead of the rest of the country, the 8th of April.
“Our analysis for todays is in line with NHS England’s: COVID-19 Death Data in England – Update 20th April.
“The rest of the UK published data sets should now follow suit and publish by date of death.”
Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Chair, Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge, said:
“NHS England now provide a very helpful graph showing the actual day people died, rather than when deaths were reported1. This clearly shows we are in a steadily, but rather slowly, improving position since the peak of deaths 12 days ago on April 8th. But, judging from the experience in Italy, this could be a lengthy process.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink: www.sciencemediacentre.org/covid-19/
Declared interests
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