By Ben Kerrigan-
Almost 25% of registered Covid deaths are people who are not dying from the disease, new official figures show.
The latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal that 23 per cent of coronavirus deaths registered are people who have died “with” the virus rather than “from” an infection.
The statistics show that Covid-19 was not the primary cause of the majority of those who had covid-19 recorded on the death certificate.
The automatic implication of the news is that those registering the death rates arising from covid-19 have included patients who died of other causes just because they tested positive for Covid-19.
The revelation is similar to an admission by the British government in the summer of 2020 that Covid-19 deaths had been exaggerated, leading to a review in which only patients who died within 28 days of testing positive for the virus were registered as dying from the virus.
The government at the time said that a patient who tested positive for the virus could have been knocked over by a bus months later, and had covid-19 placed on their death certificate.
The progress since then is that todays news which revealed Daily death figures by “date of death” also showed that Britain has had no more than 28 deaths a day since the beginning of April. This is a remarkable improvement to the excessive number of deaths reported at the height of the pandemic, including the further two lockdowns in the UK.
Prime minister Boris Johnson has cautioned the British public to be very careful, stating that the lockdown was the main reason for the fall in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths.
However, Johnson also predicted that infections leading to more deaths would rise as the lockdown is eased.
Tory MPs privately noted that Mr Johnson’s comments on the vaccine struck a more cautious note than those used by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, in a letter issued on Tuesday to MP colleagues.
MPs urged Mr Johnson to also be driven by the positive data. Steve Baker, the deputy chairman of the Covid Research Group of Tory MPs sceptical about lockdown, told The Telegraph: “I know the Prime Minister is worried about case data in other countries. But we were promised the vaccine would break the link between cases, hospitalisations and deaths.
“We’ve been told repeatedly it has done. So of course we’re looking to the Prime Minister to follow the data so that we can end the other harms that come with restrictions and lockdown. The sooner we’re talking about the crisis in cancer care, the sooner we’ll be solving it.”
Covid deaths now make up just 4.9 per cent of deaths registered in England and Wales, compared with 45 per cent in mid-January, according to the ONS.
Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said: “All the data is highly reassuring. There is becoming a case over the next couple of weeks to bring forward the reopening of hospitality, but that’s offset with caution around big events.
“The issue is as we go about our daily lives there will be a slight increase in cases, but the key is not to panic. I think this over-cautiousness can be overcome by using a data-driven approach.”
The vaccination roll out is also believed to have had a “major” impact, with the death rate for over-60s now close to that of the under-60s despite being 43 times higher at the January peak.
More than 32 million people have now had a vaccine in the UK, with the Government announcing on Monday that the target of offering a jab to all those over 50, care home residents, those who are classed as vulnerable and those who work in health or social care had been reached.