WITHOUT the devolved nations considered, England has the worst coronavirus mortality rate in the world according to a Financial Times data visualisation journalist.
John Burn-Murdoch was speaking to Sky News earlier today and explained that data from March to May shows England’s coronavirus death rate has been the worst of any country that data is available for.
Since the UK became the European country with the worst death toll weeks ago, ministers have stopped showing the UK’s outbreak compared to other countries during the daily briefings – arguing it’s too soon to make these sorts of comparisons.
Data visualisation journalist @jburnmurdoch says the UK has the second worst #COVID19 mortality rate, but England alone would have the highest mortality rate in the world.
— SkyNews (@SkyNews) May 29, 2020
Read the latest: https://t.co/DVx2B8Y6WM pic.twitter.com/84LaWbgZ5s
Burn-Murdoch told Sky viewers: “It really depends on where we draw the borders. If we’re looking at the UK as a whole, the UK is now very slightly behind Spain for the worst mortality rate of all countries that we have this data for. If we were to change that and look at England alone, England is now actually the highest in the world.
“This is over the whole period for which any country has been seeing a Covid outbreak. So for the UK and for England we’re talking about the last eight weeks of data, which goes back to the period in early to mid-March and takes us right the way through to the latest data we have which comes to May 15.”
The presenter then quizzed the journalist on whether ministers are correct in saying it’s too soon to compare these kinds of numbers.
He replied: “I’d say we’ve got enough data now that what is clear is that the UK is certainly among the very worst affected countries in the world and again England especially so.
“This data is going to continue coming in for weeks and months and of course the longer one waits the better comparison one can make, but there’s no question that the UK is now on all sorts of different metrics coming up time and again, week after week, as one of the very worst affected countries in the world.”
According to Financial Times analysis of excess deaths throughout the pandemic so far, there have been more than 60,000 deaths linked to Covid-19 in the UK.
The official UK Government figure is 37,837.
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