Coronavirus: Thousands of virus deaths may be being under-reported, warn experts

As new data emerges community deaths, experts have warned thousands may not have been reported as Covid-19 cases

The number of deaths as a result of the coronavirus outbreak could be even higher than official statistics suggest because of under-reporting by doctors, experts have warned.

Concerns have been raised that patients may be dying of other causes as a result of not seeking healthcare when they feel unwell during the pandemic. There are also fears some deaths caused by Covid-19 had not been attributed to the virus.

The data has been released amid concerns that care homes and hospices are being hit hard by the virus and the sector lacks staff, protective equipment and funding to cope.

The Office for National Statistics said there were 2,100 more deaths linked to coronavirus in England and Wales than what was reported in daily hospital data – suggesting many deaths in the community.

On Tuesday, the UK’s hospital death toll from coronavirus rose to 12,107, an increase of 778 in the previous 24 hours. The number of people testing positive for the disease increased by 5,252.

The ONS revealed there were a total of 3,475 deaths in the week ending 3 April which were coronavirus related – 21 per cent of all deaths.

But compared to the average number of deaths over the past five years there were an extra 6,000 deaths in that week than would normally be expected.

This has sparked concern from experts that more coronavirus deaths are occurring than officially recorded on certificates.

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, told The Independent: “I was genuinely shocked to see the spike in deaths and almost half the spike in deaths did not have Covid-19 on the death certificate.”

“That could point to a huge under-reporting of deaths at home and in care homes,” he said adding it could also show what he called “collateral damage” from people not seeking healthcare when they should.

He said the data suggested the largest number of deaths were concentrated in London and the Midlands, which he said meant this was “more likely to be due to under-reporting of coronavirus deaths than it is the effects of the lockdown.”

Dr Jason Oke, a statistician at the Department of Primary Care at the University of Oxford, who analysed the ONS data today added: “We think about a third of those excess deaths are not currently attributed to coronavirus.”

He questioned whether coronavirus was being missed in hospital deaths either as a result of people dying before they were tested or more likely that people were getting false negative test results.

He said: “We know that the sensitivity of the test for coronavirus is around 70 per cent.”

Dr Oke added many of the deaths were concentrated in elderly people which aligned with the effects of coronavirus. He said he would expect the number of deaths to see “significant increases” in the weeks ahead adding: “I think it is almost certain. Give what we know about the hospital numbers we would have to expect a bigger number than 6,000 next week.

“It brings home the gravity of the situation seeing these numbers.”

Tom Dening, professor of dementia research at University of Nottingham, said: “It is worrying that there appears to be a sharp increase in deaths in the community that are not known to be due to Covid-19. So far, we don’t have good data on the possible reasons for this but there are a number of possibilities.

“The first is simply that many of these are in fact caused by Covid-19 that wasn’t diagnosed. Testing remains extremely limited outside of hospitals, so we probably won’t ever know how many people had the virus during this period.

“There are probably multiple reasons for other deaths. These include people not feeling able to attend their GP surgeries, call an ambulance or attend A&E as they may have done in the past.”​