Data can tell us many things, but we need to understand what data we are looking at, and what the data is showing us. As the Covid crisis has continued, there has been debate and discussion about how many deaths are due to the disease.
The government, daily, discloses the number who have died in hospital from Covid-19, but this only tells part of the story as many are dying from the virus in care homes and, possibly, at home.
How do we know the true impact the virus is having?
One way is to look at total deaths per week, and compare them to equivalent weeks in years gone by.
The data is all available at the Office for National Statistics and I’ve used the data to generate the graphs above.
Its quite clear that, whilst there is variation from year to year, the trend for each year is similar.
Until you reach week 13 of 2020 (week ending 27 March) when the line takes a sinister upwards turn, and does not stop its climb.
By the week ending 17 April 2020 (the last week data is currently available) more than 22 thousand people in England and Wales died in that week, circa 12 thousand more than the average for that week.
12,000 excess deaths in one week alone. A sobering reminder of the deadly effect of the corona-virus.