21 April 2020
During the coronavirus pandemic, the Continuous Mortality Investigation (CMI) is publishing weekly UK mortality analysis through its mortality monitor. This week’s update shows the position as at week 15 of 2020 (4 April to 10 April) based on provisional England & Wales deaths data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 21 April 2020.
The key points of this update are:
There were 77% more deaths registered in week 15 of 2020 than if death rates had been the same as week 15 of 2019. The difference was 59% in week 14.
These ‘excess’ deaths in week 15 were 30% higher than the number of deaths registered and mentioning COVID-19 on the death certificate.
There may have been around 30,000 more deaths in the UK for the year to 20 April 2020 than if mortality rates were similar to those experienced in 2019.
Cobus Daneel, Chair of the CMI Mortality Projections Committee said:
“Our analysis looks at the increase in deaths from 2019 to 2020 as a way to measure the effect of the coronavirus pandemic. The increase in deaths is much higher than what is shown by the commonly-quoted figures for deaths in hospitals. This shows not just the terrible impact of the pandemic in overall terms, but also the large number of deaths occurring outside hospitals – for instance, in care homes.”
All mortality monitor weekly updates are publicly available here.