Cambridge professor of the public understanding of risk David Spiegelhalter recently made the point that, given the uncertainties over exactly what constitutes a death from coronavirus, the number we should we watching is the ONS’s figure for deaths from all causes. That, he argued, will give us the surest indication as to the progress of the epidemic. For anyone minded to take his advice, the ONS’s figure for deaths from all causes fell again in the week ending 1 May for the second week running. In England and Wales, 17,953 deaths were registered, down from 21,997 in the week ending 24 April and 22,351 in the week ending 17 April. These figures more or less point in the same direction as the government’s figures for Covid-19 deaths: they show a peak in the middle of April followed by a shallow decline – noticeably shallower, that is, than the rising curve of the epidemic.
The weakness of Spiegelhalter’s argument is that the deaths-from-all-causes statistic includes excess deaths which might be linked to lockdown and panic, not just those caused directly by the virus. Once again, the ONS figures indicate that these could be substantial. Over the past five years the average number of deaths in the week to 1 May was 9941. This year we had an extra 8012 deaths, yet only 6035 deaths – to judge by the deceased person’s death certificate – could be attributed to Covid-19. Therefore, it seems as if we could be seeing 2000 excess deaths a week from other causes. Doctors have repeatedly warned in recent weeks of the low numbers of people visiting A&E departments and expressed their fears that many people are failing to seek medical attention when they should be – possibly as a result of taking the government’s erstwhile slogan ‘Stay at Home, Protect the NHS’ a little too much to heart.
The ONS this morning also publishes for the first time the results of a swab test of a randomised sample of 7000 people in England and Wales. The tests suggest that 0.24 per cent of the population of England – about 136,000 – are currently infected with the virus – which, as the Oxford Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine points out, is below the level which would normally be called an epidemic. An epidemic would generally be declared if over 0.4 per cent are infected with a disease.
The other figure of great relevance today is Sir Patrick Vallance’s suggestion that early results from antibody tests show that around four per cent of the population have already had Covid-19 and are likely to have built up some resistance to it. This figure rises to ten per cent in London. Both figures are a long way from the 60 per cent which Professor Chris Whitty has suggested would be needed for ‘herd immunity’ from the disease – although the London figure is not far off the level required for herd immunity according to modelling by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine last week. That suggested that only 10 to 20 per cent would need to have been infected before the epidemic started to fade away of its own accord.
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