Update on Weekly Death Rates in the England and Wales

The latest data pertaining to weekly deaths in England and Wales has now been published by the ONS here

So here are my updated views of the top-line numbers:

The latest weekly figures, not surprisingly are well in excess of the average of the previous five year with the latest published week (week 16, w/e April 17th) recorded as 22,351 vs a five-year average of 10,547. You don't need to be a statistician to see that figure is considerably different to the normally observed values. 

To put the numbers into context I have updated the two scenario from last week - based on year to date (YTD) and by direct comparison to the later 4 week period (weeks 13 to 16). By direct comparison this suggests there have been between 22,135 and 26,959 (C) more deaths than would be normally expected. 

The daily government briefings on Covid-19 deaths in hospitals (D) explains over half of this increase, and the non-hospital Covid-19 deaths from the ONS (G) explains a further 4,313 (22.5% of reported Covid-19 deaths), leaving somewhere between 3,042 and 7,866 (J) deaths unexplained. 

These additional deaths are likely to be a combination of Covid-19 and lockdown related non-Covid-19 cases - at this point this is probably running in the region of 5,500 excess deaths in total based on the mid-point of the two scenarios below. This estimates the true death-toll from Covid-19 at week 17 in England and Wales in the region of 5,000 more than the ONS figures given a total of about 24,000. 

Notice that the final ONS hospital figure (F) is very close to the Government reported figure at the time (D) so has only increased slightly as delayed reporting has been logged, this suggests the daily briefing figures can be viewed with a fair degree of confidence when looking at the absolute levels and trend going forward.