Britain recorded 13,430 more cases of Coronavirus and 603 deaths today, as the second wave of the disease continues to decline.
Health Ministry statistics show that COVID-19 cases were slightly higher today than the 11,299 reported last Monday, which was considered a milestone because it was unusually low. The outbreak in the UK has diminished by more than two weeks as the lockdown has thwarted the virus.
Fatalities are just starting to flatten out because of the delay it can take between seriously ill and ill. Another 603 coronavirus deaths were laboratory confirmed today, down slightly from 608 last week.
Separate government data – which looks at when a death occurred rather than when it was recorded – shows that deaths began to decline after November 21.
Meanwhile, slightly older statistics – which include suspected deaths plus confirmed laboratory deaths – show the curve is slowing down. A weekly report from the Office for National Statistics showed that the number of people dying from Covid-19 in the week ending November 20 was 2,697. Up from 2,466 in the previous week.
This was a rise of only 9 percent after a 27 percent increase the previous week, when it rose from 1937, and a 53 percent increase in mid-October after the second wave spiraled out of control. The slowdown shows that the worst of the second wave in Britain has already passed, and the deaths could have peaked and are now declining again.
Fatalities will continue to rise as the numbers of new infections remain high – the daily average for positive tests is currently 14,778 in the UK as a whole – and a senior statistician has warned that the death toll in the second wave is on track to reach 20,000 before Christmas.
Data from the Ministry of Health in England indicates that deaths in the second wave of the Coronavirus peaked in the third week of November and may now decline again.
Against the background of the Office for National Statistics data today, Professor David Spiegelhalter, Professor of Statistics at the University of Cambridge, indicated that the Covid-19 virus kills more than eight times the number of people with influenza and pneumonia.
The Office for National Statistics report said that while there were 280 deaths from influenza or pneumonia in the week ending November 13, there were 2,361 deaths from Covid-19. The number of deaths from the Covid-19 virus has reached 2,697, while the number of deaths from influenza has reached 2,605.
He added: “ Between September 5 and November 20, 12,907 Covid-related deaths were recorded in the UK, and there have been nearly 3,000 since then, making 16,000 in the second wave.
Unfortunately, it seems that the prediction that the second wave will include tens of thousands of Covid deaths will materialize, and we can expect the total of the second wave to rise to more than 20,000 by Christmas.
Once again, there were more than 1,000 additional deaths in private homes compared to normal, an increase of 40 percent.
“This appears to be a long-term change in the way people die in this country, and deserves close attention.”
Although non-Covid deaths are still below average – perhaps because many people who have died from other illnesses have died from the coronavirus – there are still thousands of excess deaths this year, and they rose again during the second wave.
In private homes, there were 1,001 more deaths than the average in the week ending 20 November, along with 999 in hospitals and 180 in care homes.
For the year since March, there were a total of 34,663 excess deaths in private homes and 25,428 in care homes, while there were 7,460 less than normal deaths in hospitals during that time.
Fatalities in care homes – where people are most likely to contract Covid-19 – spiked during November, doubling in the two weeks between the start of the month and the middle of the month, but also starting to stabilize.
Data show that 467 nursing home residents died of illness in the third week of the month, up from 425 the previous week, 280 the previous week, and 168 in the last week of October.
As of November, the death toll in care homes remained relatively low during the second wave in the United Kingdom, with weekly deaths reaching 150 or fewer per week during the eight weeks of September and October.
The numbers pale compared to as many as 2,800 a week during the first peak of the epidemic in April.
A total of 2,697 deaths from the Coronavirus were recorded in the week that ended on November 13, which is 231 more deaths than the previous week, and represents more than a fifth (21.5 percent) of 12,535 deaths from all causes that week.
Although the number of Covid deaths this week is the highest since the week ending May 15, the smaller increase indicates that the number will soon reach a peak and start to decline again.
Office for National Statistics figures show that the increase in deaths began to slow in late October after rising in the wake of the massive spike in infections in September when schools and universities returned.
The positive test spike is known to take about three weeks to translate into deaths.
The Office for National Statistics found that deaths jumped by 53 percent in the week ending October 16, then by 46 percent the following week, then by 41 percent, 40 percent, 27 percent, and the most recent 9 in Cent.
Every region in England except one – eastern England – has recorded an increase in Covid-19 deaths.
The Northwest had 629, the highest, followed by 481 in Yorkshire and the Humber, 306 in the West Midlands and 289 in the East Midlands.
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