Coronavirus: ONS figures for COVID-19 related deaths only tell you part of the story
There have been more than 22,000 excess deaths - fatalities above the seasonal average - in care homes between March and 8 May.
Wednesday 20 May 2020 09:06, UK
The good news first of all. Britain is now comfortably beyond the peak of its mortality crisis.
Indeed, the number of people dying in hospitals in England and Wales in the week to 8 May was actually lower than its seasonal average.
Now the bad news.
The first bit is that those numbers are probably an understatement since the week in question included a bank holiday, VE Day, which meant there were fewer registrations than normal.
The second is that there are still hotspots where more people are dying than normal.
And as you will probably already have guessed, care homes are the main epicentre for these deaths at present.
This might not be immediately obvious from the figures most often referred to in the headlines.
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According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) numbers, there were just over 37,000 deaths registered with COVID-19 on the death certificate between March and 8 May.
Of these, just under 25,000 happened in hospitals and just under 10,000 happened in care homes.
Yet those statistics only tell you part of the story because more people have been dying than can be explained purely through these coronavirus diagnosed figures.
Indeed, there have been more than 22,000 excess deaths - which is to say deaths above the seasonal average, in care homes over that period.
And it is these figures on excess deaths that statisticians tend to prefer since they give a better sense of the overall mortality effect both of the disease and the lockdown.
And what those numbers show is that there have been considerably more deaths in care homes than in hospitals - 22,169 versus 16,066 respectively.
On the bright side, the numbers of those dying in care homes - both official COVID-19 deaths and overall excess deaths - are dropping so it is clear that we are well past the peak for the coronavirus outbreak.
Yet as more and more data comes in, the numbers are making it very clear that the real hotspot for UK deaths was not in hospitals but in other settings - in people's homes and, particularly, in care homes.