Excess mortality England and Wales 2024

In the week ending 14 June 2024, weekly deaths in England and Wales were below the expected number, at -830 excess deaths. Excess mortality was elevated for several weeks in late 2022 and early 2023, with the number of excess deaths in the week ending 13 January 2023 being the highest since February 2021. In mid-April 2020, at the height of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, almost 12,000 excess deaths per week were recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending 19 June 2020, that the number of deaths began to fall below the five-year average for the corresponding week.

Most deaths since 1918 in 2020

There were 689,629 deaths in the UK in 2020, making this year the deadliest since 1918 at the height of the Spanish flu pandemic. As the death figures show, April 2020 was by far the worst month during the pandemic. The weekly death toll for calendar weeks 16 and 17 of this year was 22,351 and 21,997 respectively. Although deaths dropped to more normal levels for the rest of the year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021. 18,676 deaths were recorded in the fourth week of this year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020.

Britain and the race for COVID-19 vaccination

The UK was the first European country to authorise the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for widespread use, starting to administer vaccinations on December 8, 2020. As a result, the UK had one of the highest COVID-19 vaccination rates in Europe at the start of 2021, while other major countries such as France and Germany were quite far behind. Also important was the fact that the UK has one of the most positive attitudes towards vaccine safety in Europe, with high vaccine hesitancy potentially hindering progress in other countries.