Counting UK COVID-19 deaths

As the UK exceeds 100,000 deaths, how do we count these deaths?

On Tuesday 26th January, the UK daily COVID-19 death toll reached 100,000.

This article looks at the different ways of counting COVID-19 deaths.

Public Health England and the daily count

Broadcasts and article will often report how many more COVID-19 there are.

This is not the number of people who died with COVID-19 on that day. There are delays between a person dying and their death entering record systems. The figure for the United Kingdom comprises:

• England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland: deaths from any cause within 28 days of a positive SARS-CoV-2 test result.
• Wales: deaths of Welsh hospital patients and care home residents, with a positive test. Clinicians must also suspect that COVID-19 was a causative factor in the death.

Public Health England call this count the ‘death within 28 days of positive test’ measure. PHE have responsibility for collating and reporting the UK-wide daily counts.

This measure is not meant to be comprehensive. There is not an intentional consensus on daily reported deaths. As an Office for National Statistics spokesperson said, the daily count is:

[a] short-term measure designed to give an up-to-date account of how the pandemic is developing[.]