This is the latest in a series of articles in the WSJ that shows significant undercounting of COVID deaths by various European countries.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronav...896486?tesla=y
Newly published figures show deaths linked to the new coronavirus in the U.K. have far exceeded preliminary estimates, adding to a growing body of evidence across Europe that closely watched daily death tallies don’t reveal the virus’s true toll.
Behind the discrepancy are lags in recording some deaths that can stretch to a week or more, as well as deaths in nursing homes and other non-hospital settings that aren’t normally captured by rapid-fire estimates used to track the pandemic.
The U.K.’s Office for National Statistics said Tuesday its latest data, dated April 11, show there were 6,235 deaths linked to the new coronavirus in England and Wales from the beginning of the year through April 3. The agency’s weekly mortality bulletins are published with an 11-day lag. Scotland and Northern Ireland report similar data separately.
That is 2,142 more deaths than the government first reported for that date on April 4, when it estimated the number of deaths at only 4,093.
The discrepancy in the British data suggesting deaths were more than 50% higher than first estimated reflects what exactly is being counted. In common with other countries, the number reported daily focuses on incoming reports of deaths in the past 24 hours from hospitals where a coronavirus infection has been confirmed by a laboratory test, as well as a running total.
In France, concerns that the death count wasn’t catching all fatalities linked to the disease led officials at the beginning of April to begin reporting confirmed and suspected deaths from the new coronavirus in nursing homes and other institutional living facilities nationwide. As of Monday, France has recorded 5,379 Covid-19 deaths in those facilities, 36% of the country’s total death toll of 14,967 from the disease. The other coronavirus deaths in France’s official count occurred in hospitals. The complete death toll is still unclear because it doesn’t include people who died at home, French authorities say.
Spanish opposition leader Pablo Casado told Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez last week in the Spanish Parliament: “Tell us if it is true that the real number of victims could double the official figures because this would be extremely serious. Spanish people deserve a government that doesn’t lie to them.”
Mr. Casado has called for an audit on the official death toll and accused the government of hiding the magnitude of the pandemic. His call came after official figures for March 17 to April 11 showed the total number of deaths from all causes in Spain was 62% higher than the historical average and almost three times the 16,205 deaths of Covid-19 reported by the Spanish Health Ministry during the same period.
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Originally Posted by Carp
