Matt Hancock launches inquiry into true PHE coronavirus death figures
Matt Hancock has ordered an urgent review into the reporting of coronavirus deaths after it emerged Public Health England (PHE) has “over-exaggerated” the true figures.
A significant proportion of the official daily death toll are people who have recovered from Covid-19 but then gone on to die of other causes, Oxford University experts have revealed.
PHE's figures feed into the daily death statistics published by the Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC).
Unlike in Scotland and Wales, where there is a 28-day cut-off, anyone who has ever tested positive for coronavirus in England will count as a Covid death when they die, even if that is months later and from an obviously unrelated cause.
Professor Carl Heneghan, director at Oxford’s Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine, said the true number of deaths from Covid-19 in England is likely to be at around 30 to 35 a day.
He said that under the current counting system, “no-one can ever recover from Covid-19”.
“A patient who has tested positive, but successfully treated and discharged from hospital, will still be counted as a Covid death even if they had a heart attack or were run over by a bus three months later,” he said.
The centre has calculated that there are approximately 80,000 recovered Covid-19 patients currently in the community.
Many are elderly and would naturally be expected to die of age or other illnesses in the next few months or years.
Professor Heneghan said that if all are counted as Covid-19 deaths, the official PHE toll could well exceed 290,000.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/coronavirus/matt-hancock-launches-inquiry-into-true-phe-coronavirus-death-figures/ar-BB16R9e9
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/17/matt-hancock-launches-inquiry-true-phe-coronavirus-death-figures/