4 ms·

Contextually this is clearly about people who died of disease, rather than accidents. It actually represented a tightening of the earlier definition, therefore

by _djo_ 4y ago

Contextually this is clearly about people who died of disease, rather than accidents. It actually represented a tightening of the earlier definition, therefore resulting in the number of deaths defined as being from COVID-19 being reduced by around 5000.

Neil44 4y ago
I was shocked reading further down, “ 1) A death in a person with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 and either: died within 60 days of the first specimen date or died more than 60 days after the first specimen date, only if COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate” Implying that in the first instance, covid does not need to appear anywhere on the death certificate and it will still be counted.
- SapporoChris 4y ago
  Not sure how much this matters, but Public Health England was disbanded March 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_England
- _djo_ 4y ago
  No. This isn’t the definition used in the official COVID death statistics published by the ONS. That’s based on a stricter definition, requiring that COVID-19 appear as a cause of death on the death certificate. The definition listed here is used only by the Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) to provide a useful point in time metric for the severity of the pandemic across a range of data sources. The benefit is that the data may be available faster than the official ONS stat, allowing for earlier interventions. With information like this it’s always important to dig deeper into the context of who, what, when, and why, rather than taking it at face value. Especially when in this case both the HSA and ONS quite openly and transparently explain both their criteria and reasoning. All else being equal it seems a decent proxy. If you died of an illness within 60 days after testing positive for COVID, it’s almost certainly a contributing factor if not the main cause.
  - Neil44 4y ago
    So who uses which data source? You can guarentee that people just pick the one that suits their objective. Here we just state "deaths within 28 days..." no qualifier. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ But at the bottom 'developed by the Health Security Agency' so it's likley using the definition that doesn't specify the cause of death on the death certificate. That's the #1 result on Google for uk coronavirus deaths.

by _djo_ 4y ago

Neil44 4y ago

I was shocked reading further down, “ 1) A death in a person with a laboratory-confirmed positive COVID-19 and either: died within 60 days of the first specimen date or died more than 60 days after the first specimen date, only if COVID-19 is mentioned on the death certificate” Implying that in the first instance, covid does not need to appear anywhere on the death certificate and it will still be counted.

SapporoChris 4y ago
Not sure how much this matters, but Public Health England was disbanded March 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Health_England
_djo_ 4y ago
No. This isn’t the definition used in the official COVID death statistics published by the ONS. That’s based on a stricter definition, requiring that COVID-19 appear as a cause of death on the death certificate. The definition listed here is used only by the Health Security Agency (formerly Public Health England) to provide a useful point in time metric for the severity of the pandemic across a range of data sources. The benefit is that the data may be available faster than the official ONS stat, allowing for earlier interventions. With information like this it’s always important to dig deeper into the context of who, what, when, and why, rather than taking it at face value. Especially when in this case both the HSA and ONS quite openly and transparently explain both their criteria and reasoning. All else being equal it seems a decent proxy. If you died of an illness within 60 days after testing positive for COVID, it’s almost certainly a contributing factor if not the main cause.
- Neil44 4y ago
  So who uses which data source? You can guarentee that people just pick the one that suits their objective. Here we just state "deaths within 28 days..." no qualifier. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ But at the bottom 'developed by the Health Security Agency' so it's likley using the definition that doesn't specify the cause of death on the death certificate. That's the #1 result on Google for uk coronavirus deaths.