Yesterday's deaths analysis - a thread.

So there I was, at 9.40 a.m. yesterday morning, sat in front of my laptop, ready to go live on the BBC News to explain the figures we'd just published, when the Skype link failed. The word "frustrating" doesn't quite do it justice.

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Commentators and reporters seem to have understood things well and were soon reporting it correctly enough - a testimony to our report.

But anyway, from the data currently available, here's what I would have said.....

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Based on all deaths registered in England & Wales in the w/e 27 March:

- there were over 11,000 total deaths, up 500 on the week before, 1,000 higher than the 5 year average for the same week (but when Easter falls affects that average as registration offices are shut)

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- 539 of these involved COVID, 5% of all deaths
- 18% of all deaths in London involved COVID
- COVID related deaths impacted older people more (as do all deaths of course)
- 62% of COVID related deaths were males
- 93% of COVID related deaths took place in a hospital setting

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Based on deaths that occurred in Eng only, with a confirmed date of death up to Fri 27 March, we now have 3 data sources to compare:
- the daily govt announcement the following day (28 March) indicated there had been 926 positive COVID tested deaths in hospitals

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- based on all deaths actually registered by the 1st April (where the death has been certified and informed to the local registration service and then sent to us for statistical analysis) 1,568 had COVID mentioned on the death certificate for deaths up to 27 March

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- NHS England are now reconciling the figures announced daily by relating them back to actual date of death. Their Sun 5 April data indicated there were 1,649 deaths with a +ve COVID test in hospital settings by 27 Mar. Their figures currently closely match ours day by day

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Death registrations take 5 days on avg after actual date of death at the best of times, so our figures will still go a fair bit higher for that same period. There are clearly also lags in hospitals confirming and reporting deaths every day. This is perfectly understandable

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NHS England's figures may still go higher for that period too, but probably not as high as ours will end up. Ours will eventually be the gold standard data source and also include all deaths, regardless of whether they took place inside hospitals or not (care homes etc)

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The lags in daily reporting mean that when deaths start going down, that will also lag. i.e. we might not see it for a few days after it starts. It also now looks like the lags are more pronounced in the daily figures announced on Sun and Mon. There is a weekend effect here

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Remember, of deaths actually registered in w/e 27 March, regardless of actual date of death, only 7% were outside hospital settings. We might expect that to increase if:

- the lags in registering deaths outside hospitals are more pronounced in a lockdown (don't know yet)

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- NHS critical care / intensive care capacities are breached
- care homes suffer significant COVID outbreaks.

So, please stay home. Please don't visit care homes

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This is an ever changing situation in terms of the situation on the ground and the data that is available. We now have 3 data legs to our stool, which is good. We will continue to try and make sense of the data and bring you weekly analysis and statistics of what it shows.

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We will also try and make sure Skype works properly between us and the BBC. Sigh.

Hope you're all doing ok. Personally I am shattered and hoping for a bit of downtime over Easter. It has been a long 3 weeks

Stay safe

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