We do know how many people died of Covid-19, not just with Covid-19
In Parliament last week, Conservative MP Liam Fox suggested that we don’t have the data we needed to clearly measure mortality from Covid-19.
He claimed data was not available for how many people died with Covid-19 as the primary infection, how many died of something else but were diagnosed as being positively exposed, and how many died because of healthcare capacity being affected by Covid-19.
But we do know how many people in England and Wales died with Covid-19 as the underlying cause in 2020. It’s 73,444. This is publicly available data, accessible on the Office for National Statistics’ (ONS) website.
And we also know how many people died in 2020 where the underlying cause of death was not Covid-19 but whose death, in part, was deemed to be caused by it. That’s 7,386.
You can work this out by subtracting the 73,444 figure from the number of people who had Covid mentioned on their death certificate, which is 80,830. This information is also easy to access from the ONS website.
But Dr Fox is right to note that we don’t have data on how many people are dying due to the impact of Covid-19 on the healthcare system, and not from Covid-19 itself, though it is hard to see how that could be calculated in any objective manner.
However, back in July the ONS and other public bodies estimated that over the long term, Covid-19 would have a bigger impact on mortality and morbidity indirectly (for example through impacts on non-Covid treatment) than Covid-19 itself.
Whether intentional or not, inaccuracies in Parliament only add to the distrust and confusion felt by many of us.
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A number of prominent Twitter users, including MP Claudia Webbe, have claimed that Covid-19 infections among teachers are 333% above the average. But this claim is not reliable because it is based on comparing two incomparable datasets.
The 333% figure was originally quoted in TES (formerly the Times Education Supplement), and comes from comparing self-reported data on infections among secondary school staff, with infections confirmed by a PCR test among the general population collected by Leeds City Council.
So an untested teacher who only suspected they had Covid-19 would be counted but, for example, a plumber from Leeds would only be counted if they had taken and returned a positive test.
As such, we cannot accept this 333% figure as a reliable indication that teachers are more at risk of infection than the general public.
We have analysed other sources and data to try to provide a clearer picture of risk:
In a complex and rapidly changing information ecosystem, fact-checkers are a trusted source of information for millions of people around the world.
Yet the Covid-19 pandemic has thrust fact checkers into a new role: that of the first responders to an information crisis.
Will Moy, Chief Executive of Full Fact, has written about innovations in fact checking amid the pandemic for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). You can read it for free below.
Our readers asked us to look into claims that 23 people died in Norway after getting the Covid-19 vaccination. This was covered widely in the international media last weekend.
According to the Norwegian Medicines Agency, as of 14 January there had been 23 deaths “associated with” getting a Pfizer Covid-19 vaccination. As of 17 January, there had been 33 such deaths.
The Chief Physician of the Norwegian Medicines Agency said that “common adverse reactions to mRNA vaccines, such as fever and nausea, may have contributed to a fatal outcome in some frail patients”.
It’s important to remember that Norway and other countries are prioritising the elderly and those in nursing homes, who may have serious underlying health conditions. So, it is expected that some deaths will occur close to the time of vaccination.
Elderly or not, when you vaccinate people in such vast numbers, you will expect a certain number of people to die by chance. This doesn’t mean the vaccine caused those deaths.
As a way of comparison, about 400 people on average die in Norwegian nursing homes per week.
The Norwegian Institute of Public Health has said that: “There is no certain connection between these deaths and the vaccine… There is a possibility that these common adverse reactions, that are not dangerous in fitter, younger patients and are not unusual with vaccines, may aggravate underlying disease in the elderly.”
