Today’s official NHS figures show another 367 deaths recorded in England where the patient has been tested and found to have been positive for coronavirus.
All of the patients were aged between 19 and 98 years old and 339 of these had underlying health conditions.
There have been no further deaths in Swindon however Salisbury NHS Trust recorded one death which occurred on the 29th March with the test results only coming back in the last 24 hours to confirm the presence of Covid-19.
Today’s jump in deaths is the second biggest daily increase since the outbreak began, following a rise of 209 deaths on Sunday and 180 yesterday.
If you have been tracking the number of deaths, you may be a little dismayed to hear that from today there is now another reporting body, The Office for National Statistics (ONS) who will now be reporting the number of deaths, albeit on a weekly basis, using a different method to Gov.UK, the World Health Organisation and CovidTrackerUK.
The ONS figures will be higher than the official Gov.uk figures because:
- The ONS will include all deaths where COVID-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, even if only suspected: the GOV.UK figures are only those deaths where the patient had a positive test result
- The ONS include deaths that happened anywhere in England and Wales, for example some might be in care homes: the GOV.UK figures are only those that happened in hospital.
Swindon related
The Swindonian will now only be reporting the death count if and when there is an instance reported in Swindon by the NHS in their official briefings.
As we understand from official figures there are currently 28 cases confirmed in Swindon.
What about patient recoveries?
The figure of how many patients have recovered is taken from Public Health England. For the last week or so this figure has stood unchanged at 135.
We understand how important the recovered number is and are awaiting further information from Public Health England as to how this figure is going to be reported as they look for a new process for collecting this figure.
