COVID-19: Death Data in England – Update 5th May

May 5, 2020

Jason Oke, Carl Heneghan


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 366 deaths in hospitals in England. These deaths are distributed back to the 19th of March.

Reporting delays from the weekend often mean Mondays counts are often lower.  For comparison: the reported deaths in hospitals in England on the same weekday 1, 2 and 3 weeks ago were:

Consistent with previous analyses, the peak day of deaths was the 8th of April. The deaths are  distributed across the following days:

and by  setting:

 

and are distributed by region as follows.

 

 

and by age, as follows:

 

 

The reporting of deaths by  NHS England underestimate those reported by ONS  – One reason 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).

See  also:

COVID-19 Death Data in England – Update 17th April

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Disclaimer the article has not been peer-reviewed; it should not replace individual clinical judgement, and the sources cited should be checked.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.