Read on Twitter
The PHE 28-day measure of COVID-19 deaths has been falling in England since 20th January (and earlier for Wales), so I was hopeful that the @ONS data for the week up to 29th might show a drop in excess deaths.
Sadly, my optimism was somewhat misplaced.
Sadly, my optimism was somewhat misplaced.
Overall in the week up to 29th January, the total number of deaths fell very slightly from the previous week, but the number of *excess* deaths compared to the average for the same week in 2010-19, actually *rose* slightly.
Separating things out by sex, we can see a much bigger excess for men. If anything, the gender imbalance in excess mortality appears to be even greater in the 'second wave' than the first.
This excess can be seen across all age groups, except the very youngest, who have had fewer deaths than usual since the beginning of the pandemic.
If you relax the y-axes so they aren't all on the same scale, you can see something quite interesting here - if you compare the excess mortality in the first and second waves, the differences is notably smaller in younger age groups.
The fact that the second wave seems to have had a relatively larger effect in younger age groups could be because of many factors, but seems pretty striking to me that % increase in deaths in 45-64 year olds is not far short of the increase in 85+ year olds.
Mortality is well above normal levels across all settings. The biggest excess is in hospitals, but deaths at home are higher than the already elevated level they were sitting at for the second half of 2020, while care home deaths have also risen quite sharply.
If we look at the cause of these excess deaths, we can see that deaths from COVID-19 have barely changed in the last week, and remain at very high levels.
Looking across the whole of the UK, at the end of January, Scotland, Northern Ireland and North East England were the only parts of the country that didn't have higher levels of mortality than the same week in any of the years from 2010 to 2019.
Finally, a *slightly* more positive note. Although the number of deaths registered as taking place in English care homes has risen in the week to 29th Jan, more detailed daily figures from CQC show that COVID-19 deaths in care homes started falling on 27th.
So, *hopefully* next week's data will look more promising.
