Why the recent COVID death figures are likely to be inflated

Throughout the pandemic the government have published two different ways of measuring deaths, and there have been merits to both.

Since last summer it hasn’t mattered so much which we’ve been using because they’ve been tracing pretty similar lines – whichever measure we use we get a similar figure, and it’s nice to have them both to validate one another.

Now though, the gap between them has become significant, and it should mean looking at a different way of counting deaths.

The measure in red on the chart above, capturing all those who died within 28 days of a positive test, is good because it can be updated really quickly after someone dies – giving up-to-date numbers on the number of people dying each day from COVID. This figure, published on the UK’s coronavirus dashboard, is widely reported.

Its limitations are that someone may have died from the disease without having had a positive test, so they would be wrongfully left out of these figures.

Likewise, someone might have died from something else despite having had COVID recently, so they’re counted but they shouldn’t be.

The other measure, in grey, looks at registered deaths where a doctor has decided that COVID was the main cause of death and listed that on their death certificate.

It’s good because it involves a judgement from a medical professional who knows the patient and how significant COVID was in causing their death, against any other ailments they may have been suffering from.

The bad side to these figures is that they are about two weeks delayed – it takes time for a death certificate to be formally registered and analysed.

That fact they’ve been similar in the past means that the deaths that shouldn’t have been included, on the 28-days measure, have been roughly balancing themselves out against the deaths that weren’t included, but should have been.

However, as the chart shows, these two lines started to diverge from one another in the middle of December, and have continued to separate to the end of January where the latest death certificate data goes up to.

Because the number of positive tests have been so high recently, we are seeing a far higher number of people dying who happen to have had a positive test recently, rather than just those who died as a direct result of having the virus.

In mid-to-late January we expect that just under 2,000 people will die every day, of all causes – based on numbers from the past few years.

This includes people dying from cancer, from heart attacks, from car accidents, from being struck by lightning, and also from COVID – everything.

In mid-to-late January, more than 5% of people in the UK had COVID within the previous 28 days.

Five percent of 2,000 is 100, so we would expect about 100 deaths a day to have been from someone who has had COVID in the past 28 days. Some of those will have, of course, sadly died as a result of having the virus.

On 28 January, the difference between the two measures we’ve been talking about was 110.

As case numbers go down, that percentage of people who have tested positive in the past 28 days will also go down, so this will become less of a problem again.

Until that time, the daily announced number of deaths will be a bit higher than the actual number – and we won’t know how much higher until a couple of weeks later.

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