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COVID-19 positivity metrics not updated

Due to a data processing issue, COVID-19 positivity metrics have not been updated this week, and will be updated in upcoming refreshes.

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COVID-19 headline ONS deaths 7 day totals

Last updated on Wednesday, 20 December 2023 at 04:15pm

Summary

Topic
COVID-19
Category
headline
API name
COVID-19_headline_ONSdeaths_7DayTotals

Rationale

COVID-19 deaths are an indicator of the scale and severity of current COVID-19 infection levels in the community.

Definition

This metric shows the total number of deaths in the last 7 days of people whose death certificate mentioned COVID-19 as one of the causes.

Deaths are reported by date of death registration.

Methodology

Deaths where COVID-19 is mentioned as one of the causes on the death certificate are reported by the Office for National Statistics.

The deceased may or may not have had a confirmed positive test for COVID-19. People who had COVID-19 but did not have it mentioned on their death certificate as a cause of death are excluded.

Deaths are allocated to the deceased's usual area of residence.

Bank holidays can affect the number of deaths registered in a given week.

There is a lag of at least 11 days in the reporting of data and the 14 days prior to the latest date available in the dataset is considered to be incomplete due to the time taken for deaths to be registered.

The count of reported new deaths in the last 7 days is the total of the daily deaths registered in the 7 days up to and including the most recent date with "complete" data.

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