More than 1,000 “additional deaths” recorded in the South West

Research published in the British Medical Journal on mortality rates across England and Wales has revealed the deaths coincided with a period of extreme pressure in the NHS.

Thousands of non-urgent operations were cancelled, a move the authors described as “a clear sign of a system struggling to cope.”

During the first seven weeks of 2018, there were 9,983 deaths in the South West. But in the same period over the previous five years, an average of 8,833 people died. The 13 per cent increase means there were 1,150 additional deaths in the region in the first weeks of 2018 - the equivalent to an additional person dying every hour.

The authors, Lucinda Hiam from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Danny Dorling from the University of Oxford, highlighted that during the seven-week period there were 93,990 deaths in England and Wales, but over the same weeks in the previous five years an average of 83,615 people died.

This is a rise of 12.4 per cent, or “10,375 additional deaths", they found.

The editorial was published after a senior health official acknowledged that mortality was “over and above” what is expected.

The authors said deaths from flu were not unusually high and the weather during this time was above average, noting that that additional deaths could also not be pinned on an ageing population.

Dr Richard Pebody, acting head of respiratory diseases at Public Health England, said: “We have seen significantly more deaths than we’d usually expect to see this winter, particularly in over 65s in England, although we have not reached yet the levels seen in 2014/15.

“These excess deaths cannot with certainty be attributed to specific causes, but the very cold weather some areas have seen since Christmas and the strains of flu circulating this winter are likely to be important contributing factors, as both tend to affect the elderly and those with underlying conditions.”