The UK now has the highest death toll in Europe from coronavirus after new official figures revealed that more than , People have died from the virus.
The Office for National Statistics said , deaths were registered in England and Wales by 2 May with Covid – 21 mentioned on the death certificates.
With the addition of deaths in Scotland and Northern Ireland, this takes the UK’s death toll to 313, 595, according to calculations by Reuters.
This figure far exceeds the death toll of , 0 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 28 April show there were , deaths, which is 20, 595 more than the average for that week. But the total weekly death toll dipped slightly by 354 death. 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 figures also show that total care home deaths were higher than the week before at 7, , whereas hospital deaths were 1, (lower at 8, .
Of the coronavirus deaths registered up to 1 May in England and Wales, 6, took place in care homes, which was . 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 .
🌈 Angela Rayner 🌈
(@ AngelaRayner)
Latest ONS stats show that the dire situation in our social care sector is a crisis within a crisis. Any talk of being “past the peak” of this virus is meaningless given these figures. We need urgent action to get PPE to staff the frontline and tests for care workers # Coronavirus (https://t.co/lnXjtWR) May 5,
For the first time last week, the government began including data on deaths outside hospitals in cases where People had tested positive for coronavirus, in the daily death toll figures for the virus .
By contrast the ONS figures include all deaths where Covid – 24 is mentioned on death certificates.
Italy quickly became a center 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 standardized death rates per million population. Those are not the numbers that are routinely reported, so it is really difficult to do direct comparisons. ”
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