THE UK Government will stop publishing daily Covid-19 death figures after Matt Hancock ordered an “urgent” review into how the figures are calculated.
The Health Secretary called for the review after researchers claimed Public Health England’s method of calculating death figures south of the Border has led to an “over-exaggeration”.
Those behind the study said PHE’s method had led to England’s virus death toll appearing far higher than the other UK nations.
Other official government death-counting procedures put a time limit on linking deaths to coronavirus. Scottish Government figures only include Covid-19 deaths where the person died within 28 days of receiving a positive test.
A UK Government statement on its website read: “The Secretary of State has today, 17 July, asked PHE to urgently review their estimation of daily death statistics.
"Currently the daily deaths measure counts all people who have tested positive for coronavirus and since died, with no cut-off between time of testing and date of death.
"There have been claims that the lack of cut-off may distort the current daily deaths number.
"We are therefore pausing the publication of the daily figure while this is resolved."
The blog post “Why no-one can ever recover from Covid-19 in England – a statistical anomaly”, from Professors Yoon Loke and Carl Heneghan, argues PHE looks at whether a person ever tested positive for the virus and whether they are still alive at a later date.
The professors are concerned that people who are dying from factors other than Covid-19 are being included in the figures.
The Office for National Statistics also reports a weekly virus death toll for England.
They show deaths where Covid-19 has been mentioned on the death certificate, and say there have been more than 50,000 virus fatalities in England and Wales since the start of the pandemic.
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