Update on Excess Deaths

The question of what is causing the recent excess mortality remains.

Two weeks ago, we launched Trust the Evidence with an analysis on ‘Why it's time to Investigate Excess Deaths.

Since then, deaths have remained above the 5-year average and today's ONS update reports in the week ending 12 August 2022, 10,355 deaths were registered in England and Wales,  950 (10.1%) excess deaths above the five-year average. 

A similar figure to 2021, when 10,372 deaths were registered in the same week.  

Also, last week, we spoke to Sarah Knapton. She published ‘Lockdown effects feared to be killing more people than Covid,’ in the Daily Telegraph and the Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths gripping Britain is only the tip of the iceberg.

We were quoted as follows:

Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University, said excess deaths began to increase noticeably from around the end of April. They have stayed high compared with the past seven years. 

“The signals in the data suggest something is not quite right,” he said. “Sus…