CMI notes sustained drop in excess deaths

CMI notes sustained drop in excess deaths

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 22 of 2020 (23 May to 29 May) based on provisional England & Wales deaths data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 9 June 2020.

The key points of this update are:

• There were 17% more deaths registered in week 22 of 2020 than if death rates had been the same as week 22 of 2019. The increase was 18% in week 21 and 40% in week 20.
• There may have been around 65,000 more deaths in the UK from the start of the pandemic to 8 June 2020 than if mortality rates were similar to those experienced in 2019.

Cobus Daneel, Chair of the CMI Mortality Projections Committee said: “As anticipated the latest ONS data shows a continued gradual decline in ‘excess’ weekly deaths. During the earlier part of the pandemic there were many ‘excess’ deaths over and above those recorded as involving COVID-19. Last Friday’s ONS publication suggests that a large number of these ‘excess’ deaths were likely to have involved undiagnosed COVID-19 in the elderly.”

All mortality monitor weekly updates are publicly available on the mortality monitor page.

“Excess” deaths are the difference between actual deaths in 2020, and those that we would expect if mortality rates had been the same as in 2019.

The ONS report “Analysis of death registrations not involving coronavirus (COVID-19), England and Wales: 28 December 2019 to 1 May 2020”.