UK coronavirus death toll rises above 32,000 to highest in Europe

The UK now has the highest death toll in Europe from coronavirus after new official figures revealed that more than 32,000 people have died from the virus.

The Office for National Statistics said 29,648 deaths were registered in England and Wales by 2 May with Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificates.

With the addition of deaths in Scotland and Northern Ireland, this takes the UK’s death toll to 32,313, according to calculations by Reuters.

This figure far exceeds the death toll of 29,029 in Italy – until now Europe’s worst-hit country. Italy’s total does not include suspected cases.

Ministers and experts have warned against international comparisons, saying the figure for excess mortality – the number of deaths from all causes that exceed the average for the time of year – is a more meaningful gauge.

The latest ONS figures for the week ending 24 April show there were 21,997 total deaths, which is 11,539 more than the average for that week.

But the total weekly death toll dipped slightly by 354 deaths, from the record level of 22,351 the week before. This was the first decrease in weekly deaths since the start of the outbreak and confirms other figures showing the UK is past the peak of infections.

The increase in Covid-19 deaths only partly explains the unprecedented levels in total deaths. The reasons behind an extra 3,312 deaths in the week ending 24 April remain unclear, with speculation that they could have been caused by delayed hospital admissions for other life threatening conditions and other factors such as economic hardship, and mental health problems.

Prof David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, said: “Well over 3,000 [of the excess deaths] weren’t labelled as Covid. So nearly a third were from something else. There is a continuing anxiety that many of these are due to the lockdown itself. The one thing we do know is that the health service has been hugely disrupted, not just in terms of routine care, cancelled chemotherapies and radio therapies and elective surgeries, but also of people with symptoms not going to hospital.”

He added: “We are not doing very well and it’s been another very bad week. I really don’t like this league table of who’s top and who’s not, but there’s no denying that these are really serious numbers.”

Prof James Naismith, director of the Rosalind Franklin Institute at the University of Oxford, called for an urgent review into deaths caused indirectly by the virus. “We urgently need to identify the cause of these deaths. There are many plausible theories as to their cause, however, we need real data on this urgently,” he said. “As we go forward, we want to minimise all deaths, not just those tagged as Covid-19.”

The latest figures also show that total care home deaths were 595 higher than the week before at 7,911, whereas hospital deaths were 1,191 lower at 8,243.

Of the coronavirus deaths registered up to 1 May in England and Wales, 6,686 took place in care homes, which was 22.5% of all the deaths from the virus by that point, the ONS figures show.

Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, tweeted that the care home figures showed it was “meaningless” to talk of being past the peak of the outbreak as Boris Johnson claimed last week.

Italy quickly became a centre of the coronavirus outbreak in Europe, with the first deaths in late February, and was the first European country to move into lockdown.

As the death toll rose, so too did the number of articles unpicking what went wrong. Italy’s large ageing population, culture of close social interactions and densely populated cities, as well as a lack of time to prepare and a slow initial response to the virus are among the reasons cited as why the country was so badly hit.

The UK, it was said, should learn from Italy. But now, it seems, it could be as badly struck.

Jenny Harris, the deputy chief medical officer for England, warned against international comparisons.

Speaking to MPs minutes after the ONS figures were released, she said: “It is extremely difficult to compare between countries at the moment. We need to not just look at the numbers clearly, but at the rates. The obvious one is age and standardised death rates per million population. Those are not the numbers that are routinely reported, so it is really difficult to do direct comparisons.”