IMPORTANT: The NHS England data on coronavirus deaths is built up over time.

Take 1 April 2020 (the day we have the most data for)

The public was informed of the 558 deaths that occurred in hospital on 1 April 2020 on the following schedule.

(see graph)
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/

We only knew about 84 of the 558 April 1 deaths on 2 April.

NHS England recorded a further 179 deaths for 1 April on 3 April.

And so on, and so on. Every day brought more clarity as to what happened on 1 April.

1 more death was recorded for 1 April as late as 14 April!

Because the data only started being released on a daily basis from 2 April, and because it takes at least 2 weeks (and likely more) to record every death that occurred on a particular day, we don't yet know the full death toll in hospital in England for any April day.

Why does this matter? Because many people misinterpret the daily figures being released by NHS England as representing COVID-19 deaths that occurred in the last 24 hours.

Instead, they're COVID-19 deaths that occurred *any time* but were recorded in the last 24 hours.

This crucial distinction is important because it means that the eye-watering headline death toll is undercounting thousands of deaths that have already occurred in hospital.

I don't believe there's malice or intent to conceal. It's just a slow, complex process.

But it does mean the 11,000 COVID-19 hospital deaths in England could easily be 15,000+ already, once the final count is in.

And of course the gap between the released count and reality widens as the daily toll increases, because each missing day of data includes more deaths.

And it also means that our "relative performance" graphs really ought to be retroactively redrawn in a couple of weeks.

We may well find that instead of the UK's death toll pacing Italy and staying behind Spain, we were in fact ahead of both - we just didn't know it at the time!