Latest Coronavirus update 29 April: These are the latest figures for coronavirus cases and deaths released by Public Health England.
– new data on COVID-19 deaths to take effect from today
– the new daily count includes deaths in all settings with COVID-19 for the first time
– data will complement the new Care Quality Commission (CQC) and Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures on care homes
Public Health England (PHE) has developed a new method of reporting daily COVID-19 deaths, to give a more complete number of those who have died from the virus.
For the first time from today, Wednesday 29 April 2020, the government’s daily figure will include deaths that have occurred in all settings where there has been a positive COVID-19 test, including hospitals, care homes and the wider community. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales already report out-of-hospital deaths.
Today’s figures have been revised retrospectively by PHE since the first death on 2 March 2020 to include additional data sources. This will bring the total number of deaths in the UK to 26,097 from 2 March until 28 April, including 765 deaths reported in the 24 hours to 5pm on 28 April.
PHE has now reported an additional 3,811 deaths since the start of the outbreak. Of these, around 70% were outside hospital settings and around 30% were in hospital. The additional hospital deaths have been identified through PHE’s laboratory system and were not reported to NHSE.
The total number of deaths reported by PHE is approximately 17% higher than previous data showed.
It is important to note that this does not indicate a sudden one day increase and is broadly in line with trends seen by the ONS in their data, which already reports out of hospital deaths.
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