by Jason Arunn Murugesu, New Scientist:
Since April, there have been 22,500 more deaths than expected in the UK. Health experts are concerned but unsure of the causes – which could include covid-19, population ageing and NHS problems
The UK has seen an unexplained surge in deaths in recent months, causing concern among the country’s chief medical officers.
Many suggestions have been put forward for why there have been about 22,500 more deaths between April and August than would normally be expected, but there is little agreement so far on the cause or causes. A spokesperson for the UK government’s Department of Health and Social Care, for example, says: “Analysis is ongoing, however early investigation suggests circulatory diseases and diabetes may be partly responsible for the majority of excess deaths.”
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
But Adrian Boyle, president-elect at the UK’s Royal College of Emergency Medicine doesn’t agree that conditions like this, potentially worsened by coronavirus lockdowns delaying routine appointments, are likely to be the cause. “It takes time to die from cancer, it takes time to die from heart failure,” he says. “These are all things that may have got worse during lockdown, but I’m not sure that is going to be driving the sudden and precipitous increase that we’ve seen in deaths this year.”
“The data suggest that it is very likely that something substantial is happening,” says Michael Murphy at the London School of Economics.
So, researchers are scrambling to figure out what is going on, with National Health Service (NHS) problems, an ageing population, heatwaves and a resurgence of covid-19 all also being mooted as possible causes for the sudden hike in deaths. The fear is that this trend could worsen in the winter when healthcare systems are typically under most pressure.
The increase in deaths has been seen across the UK. Between 2 April and 12 August in England and Wales, for example, 202,491 deaths were registered, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is 19,756 higher than the five-year average for this period – about an 11 per cent increase (see graph, below). The sudden drop in recorded deaths at the start of June is probably due to the extra Jubilee bank holiday in the UK and reflects the closure of registration offices, according to the ONS.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, between 4 April and 21 August, 23,009 deaths were registered, according to the National Records of Scotland, which is about 10 per cent higher than the five-year average of 20,854 deaths. In Northern Ireland, between 2 April and 12 August, 5980 deaths were recorded, according to the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency, when the five-year average is 5378 – about an 11 per cent increase.
That adds up to more than 22,500 more deaths than expected across the UK. What could be behind these worrying figures? Several researchers told New Scientist that it is too early to say for sure, but they point to a range of possibilities.
Perhaps the most obvious one is the coronavirus. The current five-year average mortality statistics from the various UK statistics agencies are calculated in the same way: averaging each week’s death rates from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021, but excluding 2020 figures because of the uniquely high levels of death caused by covid-19 that year. Could the coronavirus again be throwing things out of whack and pushing up the death rates?
The virus has contributed to the excess deaths, according to the data: there were twice as many deaths involving covid-19 this summer than there were in summer 2021 in the UK. But these deaths between the relevant dates in April and August numbered just under 13,000. This accounts for over half of the increase, but it still leaves more than 9500 unexplained deaths.
Covid-19 might also play a role in more deaths, though. This summer has seen rising infection levels. In early June, about 990,000 people in the UK were infected with the virus – driven mainly by the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of omicron, and more than 1.7 million people were estimated to be infected with the virus in early August.
The number of covid-19 cases probably indirectly boosted the number of deaths from other things too, says Murphy. Studies suggest that getting infected with covid-19 increases the mortality risk for other conditions. “It’s highly likely that covid would be implicated to some extent,” says Murphy.
High covid-19 caseloads also disrupt healthcare systems, although it is unclear whether any resultant rise of deaths would be observed yet, particularly for medical conditions that progress over many years, such as cancer, diabetes and heart problems.
“Cancer screening effectively stopped for a few months, the number of people being referred for tests dropped, and many tests and treatments were delayed,” says Michelle Ferguson at Cancer Research UK. “So, there will absolutely be knock-on effects, we just don’t know the scale yet.”
