LONDON (Reuters) – Britain is working towards including coronavirus deaths which take place outside of hospital in its daily figures, Public Health England Medical Director Yvonne Doyle said on Tuesday.
Daily figures published by the health ministry record only COVID-19 deaths in hospitals, but broader official data on Tuesday, including deaths in the community, show the United Kingdom’s true toll is far higher.
Asked if this broader data could be included in the government’s daily figures, Doyle told a news conference the government was working with the Office for National Statistics to speed up the information.
“We just need to be absolutely clear that the cause of death that is attributed is correct and that is what takes time on the death certificate to get right,” she said. “But we would like to have much more rapid data, preferably on a daily basis, and that is what we are working towards.”
(Reporting by Costas Pitas, Paul Sandle and Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison)
