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New all-cause mortality data for Scotland for the week up to 29th November has just been published by @NatRecordsScot, and there's some (slightly) good news - all cause deaths have fallen a little in this last week of data.
Interestingly this fall is being driven by a drop in mortality in the oldest (85+) age group. deaths in younger age groups have stayed pretty flat.
It's tempting to assume this means that care home deaths will have fallen, but actually all cause deaths in Scotland have fallen across *all* settings - hospitals, care homes and private homes.
The fall has come about as a result of a fall in COVID-19 deaths. Deaths from non-COVID causes are actually slightly up on the last couple of weeks. That's more likely to be statistical noise than anything interesting going on, I'd suspect.
If we look at the figures by cause and place of death, we can see that there's been a fairly large drop in COVID deaths in Scottish hospitals.
The number of COVID deaths in care homes has flattened off, but is still a bit worrying.
The number of COVID deaths in care homes has flattened off, but is still a bit worrying.
Another way of looking at these same numbers highlights the fact that it appears that the displacement of cancer deaths from hospital to home is a significant part of the explanation for the elevated levels of deaths at home we've been seeing since the Spring.
Finally if we look at geographical variation in all cause deaths across Scotland, we can see that most areas have seen falls, including Glasgow which has borne the brunt of the Autumn 'wave'. Deaths have risen in Lanarkshire though, which is a little concerning.
R code for these plots is here:
https://github.com/VictimOfMaths/COVID-19/blob/master/All%20Cause%20Mortality/AllCauseDeaths.R
https://github.com/VictimOfMaths/COVID-19/blob/master/All%20Cause%20Mortality/ScottishAllCauseDeathsDetail.R https://github.com/VictimOfMaths/COVID-19/blob/master/All%20Cause%20Mortality/NRS%20Excess%20Deaths%20by%20Cause.R
https://github.com/VictimOfMaths/COVID-19/blob/master/All%20Cause%20Mortality/AllCauseDeaths.R
https://github.com/VictimOfMaths/COVID-19/blob/master/All%20Cause%20Mortality/ScottishAllCauseDeathsDetail.R https://github.com/VictimOfMaths/COVID-19/blob/master/All%20Cause%20Mortality/NRS%20Excess%20Deaths%20by%20Cause.R
