England Is Experiencing Lowest Death Rate Since Records Began

Editor’s note: The virus clearly merely brought deaths that would have occurred soon anyway forward (and did so despite all the idiotic, useless, superstitious lockdowns of the healthy and the not-at-risk). You had some excess deaths so now you have missing deaths of the very frail who would be dying now, but instead died during the winter wave. That’s sad but it’s not the Bubonic Plague nor even the Spanish Flu, and in any case lockdowns and face masks didn’t help them but instead caused additional misery, loss of dignity, and death.

The proportion of people dying in England fell in April to its lowest level since records began, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

Just 851.2 people per 100,000 died last month – the lowest figure since the ONS started recording mortality rates in 2001. At the height of the first wave of the Covid pandemic last April, death rates were 1,859 per 100,000.

The latest figures show that 38,899 people died in April – 6.1 per cent fewer than the five-year average [which is 41,426 or 2,527 higher].

Just 2.4 per cent of all deaths mentioned Covid on the death certificate, a 77.6 per cent decrease from March and the largest month-on-month decline since the pandemic began.

The new data provide more evidence that the NHS is in little danger of being overwhelmed in the near future, with deaths from most causes lower than normal. Covid is now the ninth most common cause of death in England and Wales, behind conditions including heart disease, dementia, several cancers and influenza.

Latest figures from King’s College London’s symptom tracker app also suggest that Covid case rates are flat, despite the Indian variant making up an increased percentage of cases.

Last week, the ZOE Covid Study team estimated that there were 2,750 new infections per day in the UK, compared with 2,782 the previous week.

Experts believe the risk of a Covid infection is currently one in 17,205, falling to one in 31,184 after a first vaccine and one in 41,579 after a second.

Although there are localised hotspots in which the Indian variant is spreading, it is not leading to rising case numbers overall, according to King’s data, which tends to be a more up-to-date measure of the state of the pandemic than other figures.

Tim Spector, professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College, said the team was monitoring the variant closely, but there was nothing to suggest that the NHS was in danger of being overrun or that the lockdown release would need to be postponed.

“So far, we see only localised outbreaks or hotspots,” he said. “Not only in Bedford and Bolton, which we saw a week ago, but our data shows Newport in Wales, Glasgow and neighbouring areas like East Dunbartonshire or Lanarkshire in Scotland, Aberdeen, Leeds and neighbouring authorities like Kirklees and Wakefield too.

“We noticed the same trend previously with outbreaks of the South African and Brazilian variants, but these remained local and didn’t translate into wider cases countrywide. We also saw similar rates last summer in the Midlands, which never produced widespread outbreaks. I expect to see rates stay at similar levels for a while.

“There’s no clear evidence yet that the new Indian variant is significantly worse than the old Kent one. While the outbreaks remain localised and UK numbers are steady and most cases appear mild, it’s highly unlikely to cause the NHS to be overrun or stop us coming out of lockdown.

“So no need to panic, but do stay vigilant and keep logging with the ZOE Covid Study app to stay ahead of the curve and help us monitor outbreaks like these.

Source: The Telegraph