February 20, 2024

expert reaction to new methodology for estimating excess deaths in the UK

Scientists react to new methodology published by ONS that estimates excess deaths in the UK. 

Dr Jason Oke, Senior Statistician, Medical Statistics Group, University of Oxford, said:

“A change is long overdue. The excess death statistic rose from relative obscurity to prominence during the pandemic, putting it firmly in the public consciousness. This however also exposed the flaws in the way it had been calculated – using historic averages – taking no account of prevailing trends or changes in the population. As a result, excess deaths were overestimated before, during and after the pandemic. Later corrections, intended to mitigate the effects of the pandemic, served only to accentuate the bias, leading to significant overestimation of the number of excess deaths in the post-pandemic period. The new method, that takes account of trend addresses these concerns at the cost of losing some of transparency and simplicity of the previous method. The change is welcomed but the ONS should continue to evaluate its performance over time to ensure it does track population mortality accurately.”

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, Emeritus Professor of Statistics, University of Cambridge, said:

“There is no ‘correct’ method for assessing excess deaths, but it is very good to see this solid model-based methodology being adopted, in contrast to the rather ad-hoc method used before. It produces rather different, but more reasonable, pre-Covid estimates, although the estimates for the Covid period are not changed substantially.

“I look forward to seeing an analysis by actual date of deaths rather than date of registration, since this is subject to artefacts due to registration delays.  This is particularly notable around the turn of the year, when deaths are at a maximum and there are particular registration delays because of bank holidays, and this can lead to a substantial carry-over into the next year.

“This is world-leading methodology, setting an appropriately high standard for national statistics.”

https://www.ons.gov.uk/releases/newmethodologyforestimatingexcessdeathsintheukfebruary2024

Declared interests

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter: I am a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority.

For all other experts, no reply to our request for DOIs was received.

This Roundup was accompanied by an SMC briefing.