Why UK Covid-19 deaths are being undercounted – and by how much

Data analysis from the New Statesman

Each day, in the early afternoon, the UK government announces a grim figure: the number of new deaths connected with Covid-19. But there are two problems with this statistic. One involves lag. Just because a patient’s death is reported on a particular day, this doesn’t mean that it happened on that day.

The second involves gaps. The government’s daily count doesn’t include people who died after contracting Covid-19 but either weren’t in hospital when they died, or were never formally tested.

In the New Statesman, David Ottewell examines new ONS figures showing that the government’s daily death totals are substantially lower than the actual number of Covid-19-related deaths on any given day.