COVID-19 Death Data in England – Update 20th April

April 20, 2020

Jason Oke, Carl Heneghan


Summary  

Consistent with previous analyses, the peak day of deaths was the 8th of April. The structure of the data is similar across the regions, with the peak in London on the 4th of April, four days ahead of the rest of the country, the 8th of April.

NHS England releases data at 2 pm each day and reports daily count up to the previous day as well as a total figure. We wrote about the problems with reconciling the different data here:

Today’s reported figure is 429 deaths in hospitals in England.

This figure is 36% less than last Monday (13th April)  reported number of deaths (n= 667) in hospitals in England.

These deaths are  distributed across the following days:

and are distributed by region as follows:

The figure shows the reporting of deaths by  NHS England underestimate those reported by ONS (by approx 750 deaths) – One of the reasons for this is NHS England’s data does not include deaths reported outside hospitals.

Daily reports generally add more to the previous two days  (up to a maximum 300 deaths), and can add back to the previous week’s counts (the grey shaded area in figure  2).

*Inaccuracies in the data can give rise to considerable uncertainties. Over the Easter weekend inaccuracies could have been amplified due to late reporting.

See also

April 18th – COVID-19 Death Data in England

April 17th – COVID-19 Death Data in England

April 15th – COVID-19 Death Data in England

April 15th – COVID-19 Death Data in England

April 14th – COVID-19 Death Data in England

13th April – COVID-19 Death Data in England

12th April – COVID-19 Death Data in England

11th April – COVID-19 Death Data in England

10th April – COVID-19 Death Data in England

9th April – COVID-19 Death Data in England

8th April – Reconciling COVID-19 death rate in the UK

and

Tracking mortality over time

Assessment of Mortality in the Covid-19 outbreak


AUTHORS

Jason Oke is a Senior Statistician at the Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences and Module Coordinator for Statistical Computing with R and Stata (EBHC Med Stats), and Introduction to Statistics for Health Care Research (EBHC), as part of the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme.

Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine, Director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and Director of Studies for the Evidence-Based Health Care Programme. (Full bio and disclosure statement here)

Disclaimer the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement, and the sources cited should be checked. The views expressed in this commentary represent the views of the authors and not necessarily those of the host institution, the NHS, the NIHR, or the Department of Health and Social Care. The views are not a substitute for professional medical advice.