'Why traffic accident victims could be counted as Covid deaths in England'
Carl Heneghan explains an issue with how Public Health England reports deaths from Covid
Health Secretary Matt Hancock has called for an urgent review into the compilation of coronavirus deaths data in England. Professor Carl Heneghan is director of the University of Oxford's Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine. He spoke to Justin Webb about a disparity in the way that Public Health England compiles data on deaths from COVID-19, compared to authorities in Scotland and Northern Ireland. He said: "Whenever you have died, if you've had a positive test it will continue to be reported [as a Covid death], and that's not the case in Scotland or Northern Ireland, because they have a 28 day cut off.
He went on to say: "We think it's incredibly important, so that you understand exactly what's going on, that you say these are the deaths that occurred in a certain time line and then you can understand the trends and that will help the media report accurately to the public what's going on." With Sir David Spiegelhalter, chair of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University.
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