MP’s have called for an urgent investigation to determine why nearly 3,000 more people than usual are dying every week. 17,381 deaths were registered in England and Wales in the seven days to January 13 . That’s 2,837 above average for the time of year.
According to The Mail Online:
This is the highest number of excess deaths since 3,429 in the week to February 12, 2021, when the UK was experiencing its second wave of Covid-19 infections and vaccination had only just begun.
On that occasion, deaths involving coronavirus accounted for 37 per cent of all those registered, according to the Office for National Statistics.
But in the most recent week, Covid-19 accounted for just 5 per cent of the total – meaning other factors are likely to be driving the high level of mortality.
Health experts say this could include ambulance delays, long waits in A&E, unmet need during the pandemic and major backlogs for routine NHS care.
Excess deaths, sometimes known as extra deaths, are the number of deaths that are above the average for the same period in previous years.
This winter has seen a sharp spike in the figures, with deaths 21 per cent and 20 per cent above average in the last two weeks of December, followed by 14 per cent and 20 per cent in the first two weeks of January.
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine has warned up to 500 people a week are dying as a result of ambulance and treatment delays.
Labour’s shadow public health minister Andrew Gwynne on Tuesday accused the government of ‘denial and buck-passing’ and branded Steve Barclay ‘part-man, part-ostrich’ because of his refusal to accept the figures.
Speaking during health questions in the Commons, Mr Gwynne said: ‘There were 50,000 more deaths than we would have otherwise expected in 2022.
‘Excluding the pandemic, that is the worst figure since 1951.
‘The Health Secretary – part-man, part-ostrich – says he doesn’t accept those figures, but as many as 500 people are dying every week waiting for essential care and we’re still getting the same old Tory denial and buck-passing.’
Health minister Maria Caulfield replied: ‘Well I prefer to deal with facts…The BMJ has ranked the UK mid-table in Europe for mortality figures, comparable with Italy.
‘In fact, Germany has got higher excess deaths at 15.6 per cent, Finland at 20.5 per cent and Poland at 13.3 per cent.’
She said there are ‘clinical reasons for excess deaths, not political ones, and perhaps he needs to recognise that fact’.
Conservative former minister Esther McVey asked for an ‘urgent and thorough investigation’ into the excess deaths.
She told the Commons: ‘The Chief Medical Officer recently warned that current non-Covid excess deaths is being driven in part by patients not getting statins or blood pressure medicines during the pandemic.
‘But when looking at the data on statins on openprescribing.net, which is based on monthly NHS prescribing, there appears not to be a drop.
‘So where is the evidence? And if there isn’t one, what is causing these excess deaths?
‘Will the minister commit to an urgent and thorough investigation on the matter?’
Miss Caulfield replied: ‘We are seeing an increase in excess deaths in this country but we’re also seeing that in Wales, in Scotland, in Northern Ireland and across Europe, and there are a range of factors.
‘There’s an increase as we saw in December in the number of people being admitted with flu, with Covid and with other healthcare conditions, and this is not something just seen in this country but across Europe as well.’
We need an urgent and thorough investigation into excess deaths. pic.twitter.com/2jhz4zy027
— Esther McVey (@EstherMcVey1) January 24, 2023
