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England to revise DOWN its Covid-19 death toll by up to 10 percent after bizarre 'counting mishap':
Public Health England [(PHE)] currently counts the deaths of all people who have tested positive for Covid-19 among the coronavirus fatality total whether their death was related to the disease or not, an error which was noted in July, prompting the suspension of the daily death toll and an "urgent review" of protocol.
In other words, as many as 4,170 fatalities could be wiped off England's current Covid-19 death toll of 41,686.
According to reports in UKmedia, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock will bring all coronavirus fatality reporting in line with Scotland and Northern Ireland public health models, wherein a death is marked as Covid-19-related only if it occurs within 28 days of a positive test.
[...]
In England, of all deaths that occurred up to 24 July (registered up 1 August), 49,017 involved #COVID19. For the same period, @DHSCgovuk reported 41,143 COVID-19 deaths https://t.co/hKH0tTRb2W
— Office for National Statistics (ONS) (@ONS) August 4, 2020
If the system is not updated, the total of roughly 265,000 confirmed cases in England would all eventually be counted as Covid-19 fatalities regardless of the actual cause of death.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday August 10 2020, @06:07AM (2 children)
Yes. I await the end of the negotiation phase in December with curiosity. There'll probably be a last-minute flurry of activity to get something done by the deadline. The last UK election demonstrated that a majority wanted the whole process to be over and done with, and the current Government seem eager to be able to show that's (superficially, at least) the case.
Whatever agreement (or lack of agreement) is made, there'll be a portion of UK society that will be up in arms about it. I just wonder which it will be...
(And, as many political comentators have noted, the new trading relationship between the UK and EU is going to take the best part of a decade to be hammered out properly.)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 10 2020, @07:51AM (1 child)
The trade negotiations have already started. The first formal meeting was in January, and since the arrival of CV-19, have mostly been conducted via teleconferencing. There is currently an impasse. The EU still want the UK to be bound by European Law as a result of any future agreement, and the UK is saying that the reason that we voted to leave was because we want to be controlled by our own laws. I think that they are both waiting to see who will blink first.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday August 11 2020, @09:39AM
Yes. And if neither blinks, then the transitional arrangements will come to an end in December. Personally, I expect a small "filler" agreement to tide things over while negotiations continue on the trickier stuff, but who knows what'l happen in the run-up to the cliff edge?
It's nice to have the political and economic strife of Brexit, to distract us from the political and economic strife of Covid.