Wednesday April 29th





  • Government ministers no longer want to be grilled by Piers Morgan
  • They prefer to be buttered up by Keir Starmer
  • Government is promising to include deaths in care homes in the daily figures - which begs the question why they hadn't thought to do this before.
  • Confirmed cases worldwide have now surpassed 3 million
  • Deaths worldwide are just short of 220,000. In the UK deaths in hospital are 21,678. If deaths outside hospital are included the figure is over 28,000, whilst the Financial Times model puts the number of deaths at 47,100.


UK Stats

DateDays since first death
28/04/202054
Deaths 
UK (Hospital deaths)21,678
UK deaths adjusted to include non-hospital deaths28,001
New hospital deaths (official)586
New deaths adjusted to include care homes757
Death Rate (hospital deaths)13.45
Adjusted death rate17.38
Increase in deaths over previous day (%)2.8

This chart shows the hospital deaths data (as provided by the Government at its daily briefings) which is the blue line. It also shows death certificate data (which must include time and date of death) and which are updated by ONS and that is the brown line. 
We can see that the brown line appears to have peaked around 8th April and has continued to fall ever since. This is a strong indication that deaths from the virus are in decline.
It needs to be borne in mind that this data can be months behind but the general trend shown is unlikely to change as the figures are updated.
The very high figure at the start is simply a function of the fact that I started this blog on 24th March, so I have put all the deaths prior to that in one data point. The very low figure at the end is also likely to be an undercounting as most of the death certificates for deaths which occurred yesterday will not yet have entered the system.

Tests carried out UK
Total tests carried out    763,387 
  in last 24 hours43,477
How many less than Governments target56,523
People tested599,339
Negative (n/%)73
Positive (n/%)27
  average per day since first death11,099
Percent population UK tested0.91%

Big Question: will the number of tests finally reach 100,000 tomorrow?

And, does it actually matter whether they do or don't?

It matters only because both Dominic Raab and Matt Hancock, that well known comedy duo, have both stated that the UK was on course to meet 100,000 tests by April 30th. It now looks increasingly unlikely that they will meet their arbitrary target, but on the plus side the number of tests has increased and more people are being offered tests. 
It may also be significant that the proportion of positive tests is falling. But, as always, be careful how you interpret that figure because the tests are only of a tiny proportion of the population and we simply do not know how many people remain infected.

International Comparisons

This chart shows the deaths per 100k of population for selected countries. It is worth pointing out that the UK figure includes the England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland figures. Nevertheless, these 7 countries account for over 57% of all the Covid-19 deaths in the World. 
We can see clearly that Italy has the worst deaths per 100k, and the UK is second. Whilst the USA has the largest number of deaths, compared to its large population it is doing no worse than Sweden, whose liberal social distancing policy has made it a cause celebre for those who feel that the lockdowns imposed in the UK, Germany and other countries have been too authoritarian.


And this is the full data on which that graph is based.


International comparisons
 Total deathsAs % of total deaths worldwideDeaths per 100,000 population
Worldwide219,287  
Spain24,27511.0751.92
Italy27,35912.4845.24
UK21,67812.7742.53
England19,2949.6834.47
Scotland1,2620.6323.21
Wales8130.4125.90
Northern Ireland3090.1516.42
France23,66010.7936.26
New Zealand190.3927.03
Sweden2,46224.6324.63
USA2527.0317.93
Germany6,3142.887.64
Norway2060.000.39
China46332.110.32

Today's read is from Chris Giles who is responsible for creating the FT model which is reported above.

If you want to know how he came up with that figure, this article in the free to read section of the FT will help.

Please don't forget that I blog each week on politics on the sister blog to this one: Thinking and Doing



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