More than a quarter of all care home resident deaths recorded in England and Wales during March and April were caused by coronavirus, according to official data released Friday.
Between March 2 and May 1, Covid-19 was a cause for 27.3% of total deaths in English and Welsh care homes, according to the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS).
While it was the leading cause of death among male care home residents during this period, accounting for 30.3% of deaths, it was the second leading cause of death in female residents, at 23.5% of fatalities.
ONS added that in the days up to Tuesday May 12, a higher proportion of care home deaths were due to coronavirus, at 40% of all deaths “in the most recent days.”
The UK government has been widely criticized over the spread of the disease in the country’s care homes.
“I don’t deny that what is happening in care homes is absolutely terrible. It’s a huge challenge, but we are trying to put as much support as we can around care homes,” UK Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick told Radio on Thursday.
Reported on Thursday that a study from academics at LSE’s Care Policy and Evaluation Centre suggested the actual coronavirus death toll among care home residents in England and Wales could be over 22,000, based on calculations of excess deaths.
The study found that official data on deaths in care homes directly attributed to coronavirus underestimates the impact of the pandemic, as the data does “not take account of indirect mortality effects of the pandemic and/or because of problems with the identification of the disease as the cause of death.”
