UK records 93 more Covid-19 victims in preliminary daily count

Britain today announced 233 more Covid-19 deaths as the outbreak that threw the UK into chaos when it spiralled out of control in March continues to fade. 

Department of Health figures say the official final number of victims is now 41,969 — but separate data shows the actual number of fatalities is in the region of 53,000.

Just 38 lab-confirmed coronavirus deaths were announced yesterday as well as 286 last Tuesday. Daily death tolls released on Sundays and Monday are always much lower because of a recording lag at the weekend.  

Separate figures released today showed London has become the first region in England to see deaths fall below average for the first time since the coronavirus crisis spiralled out of control in March. 

A weekly report from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed the number of people who died of any cause in London was 2.8 per cent lower than average between May 30 and June 5 — 891 down from 917.  

Meanwhile, deaths remain proportionally higher than the five-year average in every other region of England and Wales, with Wales still seeing 15 per cent more deaths than usual. 

Other promising data shows the coronavirus death toll in England and Wales hit a 10-week low in the seven-day spell ending June 5, marking another significant fall.

The falling numbers of deaths and plateau in new cases means that the UK can continue to push out of lockdown, with ‘non-essential’ high street shops reopening to the public for the first time yesterday.   

In other coronavirus developments in Britain today: 

• Two women travelling to New Zealand to visit a dying parent tested positive for Covid-19, ending the country’s 24-day spell of no new cases; 
• £5 steroid dexamethasone reduces the risk of dying from coronavirus by a third in patients on ventilators, a major British trial found in what has been called the biggest medical breakthrough yet;
• Lord Hague called lockdown a ‘national disaster’ and demanded an immediate end to the two-metre rule as data showed a 600,000 dive in payroll workers and 125 per cent increase in benefit claims;
• Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall returned to work in their first public outing since the beginning of lockdown, making an unannounced visit to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital this afternoon;
• Swimmers will be asked to arrive to pools with their costumes under their clothes and to avoid the butterfly stroke under new guidelines from the sport’s governing body;
• China has put parts of Beijing back into lockdown and reimposed some travel restrictions in an attempt to contain a new coronavirus outbreak amid fears that a second wave is about to hit the country.

Department of Health data released yesterday showed that 93,163 tests were carried out on Sunday, a figure that included antibody tests for frontline NHS and care workers.

But bosses again refused to say how many people were tested, meaning the exact number of Brits who have been swabbed for the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been a mystery since May 22.

Other data released by the Department of Health and presented at last night’s Downing Street press conference showed 1,056 more people tested positive for Covid-19. 

It means the official size of the UK’s coronavirus outbreak now sits at 296,857 cases but the true scale of the crisis is estimated to be in the millions.

The daily data does not represent how many Covid-19 patients died within the last 24 hours — it is only how many fatalities have been reported and registered with the authorities.

The data does not always match updates provided by the home nations. For example, the Scottish government today announced five deaths – but the DH’s geographical breakdown has yet to be released.

The Department of Health has a different time cut-off, meaning daily updates from Scotland as well as Northern Ireland are always out of sync. Wales is not thought to be affected. 

NHS England recorded 79 laboratory-confirmed deaths in hospitals across the country. Wales recorded eight in all settings, followed by five in Scotland, and one in Northern Ireland.

It comes as ONS data released today revealed the week from May 30 to June 5 marked another significant fall in the number of people dying with the coronavirus in England and Wales as the weekly total hit a 10-week low and the lowest since the end of March.

Some 1,588 people died with the virus in that week, down 13 per cent from the 1,822 who died in the week before. 

England and Wales will not have returned to pre-lockdown levels of mortality until fewer than 539 people die in a week – that was the number recorded in the week ending March 27, when schools and workplaces closed.

As the weekly death toll continues to tumble – and some experts are hopeful it could hit zero by the beginning of July – Britain’s total number of victims is still rising. It is third worst in the world behind only the US and Brazil.  

The ONS data, updated today, suggests that the true figure was already 47,820 for England and Wales alone by June 5.

And the National Records of Scotland recorded 4,000 north of the border by June 7, while NISRA in Northern Ireland had 774 by June 5.

The reason these numbers are higher is that they include everyone who has the coronavirus mentioned on their death certificate, whether or not they were tested or whether it was the main cause of death.

By June 5, to which the backdated data extends, the Department of Health had counted 40,261 victims, meaning at least 12,000 were missing from its count.

London becoming the first region to record fewer deaths than average for the first time since Covid-19 hit the city is a welcome milestone for the capital, which was hit hard and fast by the virus at the start of the outbreak.

Coronavirus was the cause of 113 of those deaths (12.6 per cent), the data showed, giving London one of the lowest Covid-19 death tolls in that week, higher only than the South West (85) and Wales (100) and on par with the North East (113). 

Deaths in hospitals, nationally, are also now below average – the ONS data showed 11 per cent fewer people died in hospitals during the first week of June than would normally be expected.

But across the rest of England and Wales, people continued to die in larger-than-usual numbers because of the coronavirus outbreak.

This was felt most in Wales, where the number of deaths was 14.8 per cent higher than average.

In the North West there were 11.8 per cent more fatalities than usual, while the figure was 11.4 per cent in the West Midlands. No other region had more than 10 per cent excess deaths in that week: North East (9.5 per cent); Yorkshire & The Humber (8.6 per cent); East Midlands (8 per cent); South East (7.5 per cent); East (4.2 per cent) and South West (3.2 per cent).

The North West of England, which includes Cumbria, Manchester and Liverpool, had the highest actual number of extra deaths, with 156 more people than usual dying in a week – 22 per day. The total rose from 1,322 average to 1,478.  

The latest figures show 14.8 per cent of all deaths in England and Wales (one in seven) are now coronavirus-related – down from 18.5 per cent the week before and from a peak of 39.2 per cent (one in three) in mid-April.

It means the percentage of deaths involving Covid-19 declined for the seventh week running. 

The figures also show 64 per cent of all deaths registered so far this year (30,175 people) occurred in hospitals. 

A further 30 per cent (14,028) took place in care homes, with 5 per cent (2,152) in private homes, 1 per cent (640) in hospices, 0.5 per cent (214) in other communal establishments, and 0.4 per cent (178) elsewhere. 

The weekly breakdown shows there were 564 coronavirus deaths in care homes in the week ending June 5, down from 705 the previous week and 1,090 the week before that. 

The figures also show that the number of excess deaths across the whole of the UK since the coronavirus outbreak began has passed 64,000. 

Tuesday’s ONS data shows there were 58,693 excess deaths in England and Wales between March 21 and June 5, while figures from the National Records of Scotland add an additional 4,769 excess deaths in Scotland between March 23 and June 7, and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency put the figure for Northern Ireland at 940 excess deaths between March 21 and June 5. 

Together, this means the total number of excess deaths in the UK across this period now stands at 64,402. 

Additionally, the number of deaths involving Covid-19 in the UK has now passed 53,000, according to the latest available data. 

The data shows there was a greater number of coronavirus-related deaths registered for the week ending June 5 in the north-west of England (250) than any other region in England and Wales. 

The south-east of England registered 219, and Yorkshire and the Humber had 210. 

The number was down from 282 in the North West the previous week, but this means the region has recorded the highest number of Covid-19 deaths in four of the last five weeks. 

All figures are provisional and based on death registrations, which can result in a lag between the date the person dies and when it is recorded.