UK Death Toll Jumps By 4,419 To 26,097 After Care Homes Are Included

The UK coronavirus death toll has jumped to 26,097 after the Government started counting deaths in care homes and the wider community for the first time.

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Previously, the Government only counted people who had died in hospitals after testing positive for coronavirus. Yesterday, the official figure on hospital deaths stood at 21,678 – some 4,419 lower than today’s figure.

Public Health England (PHE) has confirmed the new method of reporting includes an additional 3,811 deaths since the start of the outbreak.

Of these, around 70% were outside hospital settings and around 30% were in hospital.

During the daily briefing from Downing Street, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said: ‘As of today there have now been 818,539 tests for the virus across the UK including 52,429 tests that took place yesterday.

‘165,221 people have tested positive and that’s an increase of 4,076 cases on yesterday’s number.

‘Those figures show that up to yesterday on the new measure we have recorded an additional 3,811 deaths in today. And I think it’s just important to say that those additional deaths were spread over the period from the 2nd of March – the 28th of April.

‘They don’t represent a sudden surge in the number of deaths.’

‘I think we must never lose sight of the fact that behind every statistic there are many human lives that have been tragically lost before their time.’

PHE medical director Dr Yvonne Doyle added: ‘Every death from Covid-19 is a tragedy. Tracking the daily death count is vital to help us understand the impact of the disease.

‘These more complete data will give us a fuller and more up-to-date picture of deaths in England and will inform the Government’s approach as we continue to protect the public.

‘It will remain the case that ONS (Office for National Statistics) data, which publishes every week with data from 11 days ago, includes suspected cases where a test has not taken place.

‘ONS figures will therefore continue to include more deaths than our daily series.’

Earlier today, England recorded another 445 hospital deaths, while Scotland reported 83 deaths, and another 73 died in Wales. Northern Ireland has not yet released its figures.

Health organisations have been calling for the numbers outside hospitals to be published every day, while experts on Tuesday said they could not say the peak in care homes has been reached yet.

According to weekly figures released by the Office for National Statistics yesterday, more than 6,500 deaths involving coronavirus have occurred in England and Wales outside of hospital.

Care homes notified the Care Quality Commission (CQC) of 4,343 deaths of residents in homes between April 10 and 24 in England.

More than half of the notifications, 2,178, were made in the last five days of that period.

Care providers said it is clear the ‘epicentre of this crisis is in care homes’ and that the sector is ‘sadly the most affected area of society in terms of deaths from Covid-19’.

Prior to April 10, there were 1,000 deaths registered in care homes, Nick Stripe, head of health analysis, told the BBC.

Separately, the ONS said there were 1,220 deaths which occurred outside hospital, excluding care home deaths, in England and Wales up to April 17.

Of these, 883 took place in private homes, 190 in hospices, 61 in other communal establishments and 86 elsewhere

The ONS and CQC figures added together make a total of 6,563 deaths outside hospital.

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