Up to a third of new Covid death data misreported, scientists say
Scientists at the University of Oxford have found that up to a third of deaths attributed to Covid-19 since mid-July have been misreported by Public Health England.
In an article for the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, the scientists compare hospital certificates in which Covid-19 was judged to be the “underlying cause of death” with certificates that record it as a contributing factor but not the underlying cause. According to WHO guidance, cases in the latter category should not be included in official mortality figures for Covid-19.
By comparing PHE data on excess mortality, the authors found that an increasing proportion of figures on Covid-related mortality rates in England and Wales have erroneously included cases where the virus was not the underlying cause of death but was a contributing factor. For the week ending August 25, that error was as high as 35%. A full 42 of the 120 recorded deaths in that week were misreported.
The authors write:
World Health Organisation guidelines state that “COVID-19 should be recorded on the medical certificate of cause of death for ALL decedents where the disease, or is assumed to have caused, or contributed to death i.e. COVID-19 is the underlying cause of death”. […] Alternatively, COVID-19 may be present on the death certificate as a significant condition contributing to death but not the underlying cause. These guidelines are clear that in such cases these deaths “are not deaths due to COVID-19 and should not be certified as such.”
…While we found that roughly one in thirteen (7.8%) deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate did not have the disease as the underlying cause of death, this proportion has risen substantially to 29% (nearly a third) for the last eight weeks of reporting.
While the method and data used by the authors have not been peer-reviewed, the article warns that the error could continue to increase into the winter months as excess deaths are bumped up by common flu and other illnesses.
It follows the Scottish Sun’s report that up to 80% of patients in Scottish hospitals were erroneously included in official Covid stats, a system that has now been revised.
You can read the full article on death certificate data, which includes the methodology and statistics, here.