Coronavirus: 2020 sees largest annual increase in deaths since WW2
Excess fatalities in the UK rose to levels not seen since wartime
Excess deaths in England and Wales rose by 15% in 2020, marking the largest year-on-year increase since the Second World War.
Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows that there were 608,002 deaths registered in England and Wales last year, up from 530,841 in 2019. It marks the highest total number of deaths since 1918, when there were 611,861.
Last year also saw the first double-digit increase in excess deaths since 1940, which had 16% more deaths than 1939. Excess deaths represent the number of fatalities beyond the expected number of deaths based on the data over the previous five years.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Almost 168,000 of last year’s deaths occurred in private homes. Matthew Reed, chief executive of Marie Curie a charity providing support to people with terminal illnesses, told The Times that “a silent crisis has been raging behind closed doors and we are concerned that many people who died at home this year have not had the care they needed”.
Richard Murray, chief executive of The King’s Fund, said that the UK has more excess deaths per million people than most European countries and the US, adding: “It will take a public inquiry to determine exactly what went wrong, but mistakes have been made.”
However, while “at first glance it does appear that we had a dreadful death toll... this is not the full picture because it fails to take into account the growing and ageing population”, The Telegraph says.
At the beginning of the 20th century there were around 40 million people living in the country, a figure that has now risen to more than 67.8 million. “If adjusted as a proportion of the population, 2020 had only the highest crude death rate since 2003,” the paper adds.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Experts have suggested that more deaths will likely be added to the 2020 total in the coming weeks because of a lag in death registrations over the Christmas period.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
Chas Newkey-Burden has been part of The Week Digital team for more than a decade and a journalist for 25 years, starting out on the irreverent football weekly 90 Minutes, before moving to lifestyle magazines Loaded and Attitude. He was a columnist for The Big Issue and landed a world exclusive with David Beckham that became the weekly magazine’s bestselling issue. He now writes regularly for The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, Metro, FourFourTwo and the i new site. He is also the author of a number of non-fiction books.
-
Covid four years on: have we got over the pandemic?
Today's Big Question Brits suffering from both lockdown nostalgia and collective trauma that refuses to go away
By Chas Newkey-Burden, The Week UK Published
-
The hollow classroom
Opinion Remote school let kids down. It will take much more than extra tutoring for kids to recover.
By Mark Gimein Published
-
Excess screen time is making children only see what is in front of them
Under the radar The future is looking blurry. And very nearsighted.
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published
-
Covid-19: what to know about UK's new Juno and Pirola variants
in depth Rapidly spreading new JN.1 strain is 'yet another reminder that the pandemic is far from over'
By Arion McNicoll, The Week UK Published
-
Long-term respiratory illness is here to stay
The Explainer Covid is not the only disease with a long version
By Devika Rao, The Week US Published
-
Covid inquiry: the most important questions for Boris Johnson
Talking Point Former PM has faced weeks of heavy criticism from former colleagues at the public hearing
By The Week Staff Published
-
China's pneumonia cases: should we be worried?
The Explainer Experts warn against pushing 'pandemic panic button' following outbreak of respiratory illness
By Keumars Afifi-Sabet, The Week UK Published
-
Vallance diaries: Boris Johnson 'bamboozled' by Covid science
Speed Read Then PM struggled to get his head around key terms and stats, chief scientific advisor claims
By The Week UK Published