Around 1,700 'unexplained' deaths not linked to coronavirus in private homes - expert

The number of deaths in private homes not linked to coronavirus have seen a huge unexplained rise, a top statistician has said.

Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge, said more attention needs to be paid to private homes, which have seen soaring deaths, few of which have been linked to Covid-19.

He said around 8,800 fewer non-Covid-19 deaths occurred in hospitals in the seven weeks up to May 15.

It appears these contributed to the "huge rise" in deaths at home during this period - with 10,500 excess non-Covid-19 deaths taking place, he said.

This leaves 1,700 "unexplained" non-Covid-19 deaths at home, while 1,800 deaths involving coronavirus were recorded in homes over the same period.

He said: "These could be cases - and this is a big assumption, of people whose lives might have been prolonged had they gone to hospital, which is about equal to the number of Covid deaths.

"So that's assuming that all the displacement from hospital beds has been back into homes, and I think that doesn't sound too unreasonable."

Prof Spiegelhalter said there was a "huge" and "immediate" spike in homes very soon into the epidemic, close to the time when hospitals started minimising the normal service they were providing.

Further study is needed to work out how many of these deaths may have occurred later down the line if normal healthcare had existed, he said.

He added: "This isn't to attribute blame - it's purely because this isn't going to be our last epidemic and we really need to learn about the indirect impact of measures that are taken."

Carl Heneghan, professor of evidence-based medicine, University of Oxford, said: "This (issue of) non-Covid deaths in the home, and this issue of exporting death is an urgent area for inquiry.

"Whether people have been discharged too early, or whether they're not presenting sufficiently enough, there are issues here, because these people, this number is significantly higher than what we'd normally expect in the home setting."

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