Care Home Covid Deaths Rise For First Time Since January

Care home resident deaths involving Covid-19 in England and Wales have risen for the first time since January, according to the latest Office for National Statistics (ONS) data.

In its latest weekly statistics, the ONS reported 25 COVID-19 related deaths in the week ending 14 May, up by 11 on the previous week, following over three months of declining numbers.

That compares with 15 care home resident Covid-related deaths in the week ending 7 May and 35 the week before that.

The rise is the first week-on-week increase since 2,505 deaths were recorded in the week ending 29 January.

The data refers to all deaths where either the death occurred in a care home or occurred elsewhere – such as hospitals – but the place of residence of the deceased was recorded as a care home.

Increases in Covid-related deaths were recorded in north-east England, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, eastern England, London and south-east England.

North-west England, East Midlands, south-west England and Wales all saw decreases or flat rates of Covid-related deaths.

In total, there were 2,273 all-cause deaths in care homes in England and Wales in the week ending 14 May meaning Covid-related deaths accounted for 1.3 per cent.

As well as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) data, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) provides numbers of deaths involving COVID-19 in care homes in England that are based on the date the death was notified to the CQC. From 10 April 2020 (the first day when data were collected using the CQC’s new method of identifying deaths involving COVID-19) to 21 May 2021, there were 29,372 deaths of residents in care homes involving COVID-19. Of these deaths, 8 were notified in the week up to 21 May 2021.

Because of a revision of the coding for the CQC data, it has been identified that some deaths between 2 November 2020 and 22 April 2021 initially coded as “not COVID-19 have been updated to either “confirmed COVID-19” or “”suspected COVID-19”