One thing that leaps of the page is how many folks died of alzhiemers and dementia over and above what we would generally expect. Alvez has raised this on a few occasions and he is right.
What did surprise me is for other causes of death, they are largely in-line with the 5 year averages for the same causes. I know it is only a month of data, but I still find that surprising given the excess deaths over the norm for April. The question I am asking myself now is "Where and how have the 20 odd thousand additional deaths been caused by?"
Tomorrow ONS will publish analyses of "excess" deaths where Covid was not mentioned on death certs and give possible explanations for these and to what extent the data so far supports them - during Apr approx 1/4 of deaths registered above 5-yr avgs were not linked to Cpvid
Really good and detailed analysis of non-Covid excess deaths published today by ONS. These total 12,900 out of a total of 46,380 excess deaths registered between 7th March and 1st May this year.
Available at link below for those interested:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...dwales28december2019to1may2020/technicalannex
In summary, they investigate five possible explanations for the rise in excess deaths which are not recorded as involving Covid-19, namely undiagnosed Covid-19; delayed health care; reduced hospital capacity; stress-related causes; and changes to the death registration system (basically deaths being recorded more quickly than in the past, so artificially inflated).
Of these possible explanations, they state there is no real evidence to support either reduced hospital capacity or changes to death registration, but would need to analyse data over the longer-term to be conclusive. Similarly, for stress-related causes, whilst there is a rise in deaths from heart attacks and hypertension, there have been rises in causes of death across the board, plus it is too early to be able to demonstrate any link between these causes and stress. Data on suicides will not yet be available, due to the length of the coroner’s inquest process.
The ONS states that undiagnosed Covid-19 is a likely explanation for a number of the excess deaths in care homes which have been recorded as non-Covid. This is because of a high correlation between the age groups involved, comorbidities and associated symptoms recorded on such death certificates and those which are known to have been caused by Covid-19.
In terms of delayed health care, ONS states that deaths from asthma and diabetes have increased significantly when compared with the 5-year average, which could be indicative of people not receiving care quickly enough to prevent death. However, they also note the close correlation between these conditions and Covid-19 deaths, so conclude that further analysis would be needed to distinguish whether these were due to delayed care or are further evidence of undiagnosed Covid-19.
