Tragically 14,576 deaths now have been reported in the United Kingdom with COVID-19 being a contributing factor. What a huge tragedy for all who have died, their families and us as a society too. We don’t yet know how many of people will be killed by Coronavirus but some estimates suggest the final toll will be well in excess of 20,000 people. Thankfully experts still think it will be a fraction of the 228,000 Britons killed by the so-called Spanish Flu in 1918-20; as I have mentioned before, my grandfather being one of them. I suppose that’s a relief of sorts.
Coronavirus is a notifiable disease. If someone has COVID-19 in their body when they die the law requires this to be notified to government authorities. Having looked it up there seem to be 32 notifiable diseases in the UK, including COVID-19. Those 32 diseases all seem to be ones which a person can catch from someone else. I don’t think conditions like cancer, heart disease, diabetes, liver or kidney failure are infectious and they are not notifiable like Coronavirus. Yet in practice just about as many people as before the current crisis will be dying of such illnesses as before it.
So, it seems that many people on the daily death toll will also have died of some other disease. But their deaths are currently all attributed to COVID-19. In truth Coronavirus probably exacerbated many illnesses and brought death forward.
The BBC News reported on 14 April that a boy aged 18 in Coventry had been found with Coronavirus the day before he died. Later the hospital put out a statement saying that his death was really because of illness that was not connected to Coronavirus. Yet there are other cases where people have died with no underlying health conditions; such as a 13-year old boy from London.
To date we have no idea about what proportion of our current death rate is directly attributable to COVID-19. Obviously, it could be a major cause of death or simply present in the body when it gave up for other reasons. We simply do not know.
Let me look at the figures a little closer. Normally in the UK about 600,000 people die each year. That is about 1,640 deaths a day. People in poor health and the elderly make up most of those figures. Statistically 10 per cent of people over 80 years of age will die within the year. Interestingly Sir David Spiegelhalter, Winton Professor of Public Understanding of Risk at Cambridge University, has suggested that the risk of such an age group dying if infected with COVID-19 is much the same. He maintains there will actually be a “substantial overlap” but many would have died within a short period anyway. He agrees that knowing just how many people are in this category is impossible to say at the moment.
Public Health England figures suggest that about 17,000 extra deaths a year are caused by flu. But Coronavirus figures are on a trajectory to be well in excess of that or are they - if COVID-19 is not always the root cause of many deaths?
The restrictions placed on us by lock-down are aimed at stopping the wholescale spread of Coronavirus and thus suppressing the so-called peak of the illness not least so that the NHS is in a position to deal with the problem. We are not there yet apparently. I agree that now is not the time to make decisions about reducing lockdown restrictions but it may not be too far away because society in suspended animation cannot go on indefinitely.
The virus may die down but it will not go away and we will have to find a way of living (in all senses) with it. Spanish Flu one hundred years ago came back in a second wave that was even more deadly than the first. With luck we will have a universal vaccine – optimistically some say by the autumn – but who knows?
Yet the lock-down itself is likely to be a catalyst for deaths too; for example, from depression/suicide or failing to be treated in hospital for serious illnesses et cetera. We have no idea how many will die indirectly because of lockdown at the moment but it must be a very important factor in what our governmental decision-makers decide.
So, the Government has to weigh up the evidence very carefully when planning any future exit strategy. It will be a very difficult exercise and choices, perhaps even unpalatable ones, may have to be made. Getting the right statistics and interpreting what they mean correctly in terms of risk is key to making such choices and then getting the best plan to set us all free again.