Coronavirus

[Muddy Retriever]

We need to be able to see both the new method figures and the old method figures - the latter are now very hard to find, despite it being said they would be provided. As Spiegelhalter says in the BMJ article: " The 28 day limit marks an improvement . . . but does exclude those who die more than a month after testing, even if they have covid on the death certificate. Including deaths up to 60 days, and later covid registered deaths, seems even better, but still excludes people who were not tested."

As to the 88% figure, it depends how you define a Covid death - this may seem circular, but I know from having filled them out myself that there is a huge amount of opinion and politics in what is written on death certificates - it used to be almost forbidden to write "cigarette smoking" for example - and in the current climate, without a positive test, it will often make life easier to leave Covid off, even if it was strongly suspected.

The 88% is analysis performed by PHE, which showed that 88% of those who died from Covid did so within 28 days of testing positive. So let's say PHE's daily figures done on a particular day stated deaths from Covid were 9, the true figure might be 10. And don't forget that there will be some who died within 28 days of a positive test of something else, but will still be included as a Covid death.

Why do you want to see the figures on the old basis? They were becoming ridiculous and as time goes on and people die of something else will become even more so.