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The Office for National Statistics (ONS) have released provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 22 October 2021.
Prof Kevin McConway, Emeritus Professor of Applied Statistics, The Open University, said:
“This week’s ONS release of provisional numbers of death registrations takes the data up to the week 16-22 October. As usual, it concentrates on England and Wales, but also includes some figures for the whole UK.
“On deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, the position for the whole UK isn’t very encouraging, but it shouldn’t be unexpected given that the pattern generally follows what’s been seen on the dashboard at coronavirus.data.gov.uk. The latest week’s total of Covid-related death registrations is up by 9% compared to the previous week, to 974. That’s obviously a much smaller number than the peak back in January this year, when the weekly number was over nine times as large, but I don’t want to pretend that almost 1,000 Covid-related deaths in a week is trivial. Numbers of Covid-related death registrations were higher than the previous week in three of the four UK countries, but not in Scotland where they fell back to the same level as two weeks previously. The picture across the English regions is mixed, with five of the nine regions registering more Covid-related deaths in the latest week compared to the week before, and four registering fewer. But I should point out that the numbers of Covid-related deaths in areas with smaller populations, such as the English regions, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and arguably Scotland too, are expected to be quite variable from week to week because the overall numbers of deaths there are relatively small compared to the number in England. The overall change at the level of the whole UK is not large, though. The current pattern of increases in the UK total has so far only lasted two weeks, after falls for the two weeks before that, and the total for the most recent week, 974, is exactly the same as the total three weeks earlier (week ending 1 October). So I’m still inclined to feel that what we’re seeing is numbers of Covid-related death registrations varying around a roughly constant level. As time goes on, any true long-term trends will become clearer, if they do actually exist.
“Last week, in commenting on the Covid-related death registrations data, I mentioned that the proportion of people whose death certificate mentioned Covid-19, who were aged 70 or over, had risen in recent weeks, and I speculated on some possible reasons for that. For the latest week, the proportion of people aged 70+ among Covid-related deaths in England and Wales fell back a bit, to 73%. (The week before it was 77%.) That’s still a little higher than it generally was over the summer – but one of the possible reasons I gave for last week’s increase was that it was just a short-term statistical blip, and this week’s figure makes that look more likely.
“In England and Wales, death registrations from all causes are again above the five-year average for 2015-19. On that measure, therefore, this is the 16th consecutive week for which there are excess deaths, by this measure. Some of those excess deaths are directly caused by Covid-19, in the sense that Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificates of people who sadly died. But a considerable number of the excess deaths do not directly involve Covid-19.”
All our previous output on this subject can be seen at this weblink:
www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19
Declared interests
Prof Kevin McConway: “I am a Trustee of the SMC and a member of its Advisory Committee. I am also a member of the Public Data Advisory Group, which provides expert advice to the Cabinet Office on aspects of public understanding of data during the pandemic. My quote above is in my capacity as an independent professional statistician.”
None others received.