Claims have emerged that suggest thousands of coronavirus deaths are about to be wiped from the government’s official count. Last month the Health Secretary Matt Hancock agreed to a review of how daily death counts are calculated in England amid accusations of a ‘statistical flaw’.
The review was ordered after academics found a glitch in Public Health England’s methods which resulted in victims being counted as a Covid death if a person had died after ever testing positive for Covid-19. This is even if they were hit by a bus after beating the disease months later for example.
In addition to this example, this way of counting Covid deaths would have meant that technically no-one could ever recover from the virus and all of the 265,000 confirmed Covid infections would eventually have had their deaths attributed to the disease.
Changes to this system could see as many as 4,000 deaths removed from England’s official death toll of toll of 41,749. One expert is quoted in the Daily Mail today that his ‘best guess’ is that more than 1,000 people have had their deaths wrongly recorded as caused by Covid-19.
Mr Hancock looks set to bring the figures in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland, which only attribute deaths to Covid-19 if the death occurs within a month of their diagnosis. UNN’s Oliver Down understand that the Health Secretary will announce this new measurement by the end of the week.
Oxford University’s Professor Carl Heneghan and Dr Yoon Loke from the University of East Anglia uncovered the statistical flaw. Professor Heneghan has said: ‘It is a sensible decision. There is no point attributing deaths to Covid 28 days after infection’.
Current Affairs Correspondent | My name is Oliver Down I am 22, and a staunch brexiteer. I am a Bristolian lad who studied politics in Leicester. I believe in free speech and accurate journalism and I won’t be afraid to give you “the other side” of the story!
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