Thursday April 23rd




Headlines


  • Hospital deaths in the UK have fallen for 2 days running
  • But there are still major concerns about the accuracy of UK reporting of Covid-19
  • Reports are emerging of doctors being advised to avoid putting Covid-19 as cause of death on death certificates issued to people who die in care homes
  • PPE has still not found its way to the front line staff who need it.
  • There have been 186,258 deaths from Covid-19 worldwide
  • The UK figure of 18,738 hospital deaths makes up 12% of this total
  • 24% of all deaths in the UK have occurred in London
  • For comparison the USA has 26% of the total, whilst Sweden which has not implemented a lockdown has 0.1%
  • Just over 98,000 people have been tested in the UK over the past week. The Government continues to say that it will be carrying out 100,000 tests per day by April 30th
  • April 30th is, by coincidence, the day of Captain Tom Moore's 100th birthday. I discuss the charity efforts by Captain Moore and the BBC telethon here

UK Stats


DateDays since first deathWeekly comparison figures
23/04/202049
Deaths18,7385,009deaths in the past week
Note: these are hospital deaths only, the Government's preferred measure. The real death count, if deaths in care homes etc are included is closer to:UK Hospital deaths as % of Worldwide deaths12
Deaths adjusted to include non-hospital deaths22,334Germay deaths as % of Worldwide deaths3
New deaths (official)638Sweden deaths as % of Worldwide deaths0.1
Adjusted daily deaths*760
Death Rate**13.57USA deaths as % of Worldwide deaths26
Adjusted death rate16.17
Increase in deaths over previous day (%)13.6NZ as % of Worldwide deaths0.01
Total tests carried out (persons)425,82198,213people tested in the past week
  in last 24 hours14,629The Government set itself a target of 100,000 tests per day by the end of April
How many less than Governments target85,371
  average per day since first death8,690
Negative (n/%)68
Positive (n/%)32
Percent population UK tested0.63%
*The adjusted death rate has been recalculated based on figures released on 21st April by ONS and the daily new deaths therefore takes this into account.                              **Please note that the death rate cited here is the number of deaths amongst those who have tested positive in tests. It should not be inferred from this that this is the proportion of the population who are likely to die.

4 Nations

CasesIncrease in cases over prevous day (%)DeathsNew deathsPercentage increase in deaths over previous dayDeaths per 100k pop
England102,221316,785514330
Scotland9,40941,06277820
Wales8,358364117320
N. ireland3,0162250171413
Data from 23rd April

English Regions

 Total confirmed casesIncrease over previous day (%)% 0f all UK deaths
 London 22,7671.2724
 South East 14,4122.91 
 South West 5,4113.65 
 North West 15,6822.85 
 East 8,6543.15 
 Midlandss 16,6633.91 
 North East/Yorkshire 14,2465.51 
Currently only able to find death rates for London. As soon as I can locate them for other English regions I will do so.

Article of the Day

People talk of care homes and patients as if they are an abstract thing. To some extent if you are safely self-isolating at home and don’t have elderly relatives, they are. I was struck by the human cost in this account of just one patient by Dr Phil Whitaker in this week's  New Statesman.






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