Unexplained surge in non-Covid deaths triggers calls for probe

Experts are demanding an

Experts are demanding an urgent inquiry into whether tens of
thousands of non-Covid deaths since July could have been
prevented.

Latest Office for National
Statistics^[1] (ONS) figures show a
“devastating surge” of around 20,800 additional deaths in England
and Wales in the past four months compared with the average for the
same period in the five years up to 2019, said Metro^[2]. Of these extra
fatalities, referred to as “excess deaths”, 45% were not related to
coronavirus. 

Although a higher mortality rate is expected
at this time of year^[3], concerns are growing
that NHS delays during the pandemic have left patients “with
previously treatable conditions suffering illnesses that have now
become fatal”, said The Telegraph^[4].

Chancellor Rishi Sunak last month committed £5.9bn of extra NHS
funding to help tackle the healthcare crisis. But almost six
million people in England remain on waiting lists for elective
procedures, “the highest number ever recorded”, the paper
continued.

And ambulance wait times are also “at a record
high”. NHS records^[5] show that heart attack
patients are now waiting an average of 53 minutes for help to
arrive. The NHS target time to reach a suspected stroke or
heart attack victim is 18 minutes.

Kevin McConway, emeritus professor of applied statistics at The
Open University, said that the recent surge in excess deaths
included “considerable excess numbers of deaths in people’s own
homes, compared to the 2015-19 average”.

“In the most recent week, there were 891 excess deaths at home
that did not involve Covid-19 – that’s about 127 a day,” he told
The Telegraph.

The Times^[6] reported last week that
latest figures show that “private homes are the only setting where
deaths in England and Wales have been consistently above the
pre-pandemic average every month from January 2020 to June
2021”.

ONS^[7] data suggests these
extra deaths in homes were driven by conditions including heart
disease and dementia, which were the leading causes of deaths
in England and Wales in September, followed by Covid-19.

Sarah Caul, head of mortality analysis at the
non-ministerial department, said that the pandemic “appears to have
had an indirect effect” on rates of deaths outside of healthcare
settings.

“This could be because of a combination of factors which
may include health service disruption, people choosing to stay away
from healthcare settings or terminally ill people staying at home
rather than being admitted to other settings for end-of-life care,”
Caul added. 

“More investigation is needed to understand this.”

Her call for a probe into above-average death rates has been
echoed Professor Carl Heneghan, an expert in evidence-based
medicine at Oxford University.

“If you look at where the excess is happening, it’s in
conditions like ischaemic heart disease, cirrhosis of the liver and
diabetes, all which are potentially reversible,” he told The
Telegraph. “This goes beyond just looking at the raw numbers and
death certificates.

“We need to go back and see if these deaths have any preventable
causes.”