A lot will depend on the next 2-3 weeks but it is still very likely that total deaths this year will be the same as in other years, even with the pandemic.
There's no evidence for or that.
The median death registration time was in 2018 5 days. But longer in certain regions i.e. the South East.
Current figures cover registrations for 21st to 27th March, which is therefore roughly deaths for the 16th to 22nd March, but perhaps a day or two earlier depending on current delays.
The covid-19 deaths reported for 16th to 22nd March:
16: 20
17: 16
18: 33
19: 40
20: 33
21: 56
22: 48
That is 246.
The reported number of deaths was 11,141 vs 10,130 average, which is 1011.
So for weeks 1-13 this year, versus 5 year average
1: +79
2: +236
3: -226
4: -904
5: -594
6: -939
7: -693
8: -707
9: -367
10: -603
11: -186
12: +72
13: +1,011
We are still only at 11,000 deaths, which considering that annual deaths range between about 8k in late August and 13k in January is not that bad.
At the moment we have about 1000 extra deaths where we were expecting only 250 (or less, if you consider that this is deaths with covid-19, not necessarily of covid-19).
We will get a better picture in a couple of weeks but for now the stats are quite old.
Just to clarify I think there was some confusion:
5 deaths were registered* in week 11 (to 13th March) with covid-19 on the death certificate, 103 in week 12 (to 20th March), and 539 (to 27th March). This is a total of 647
- for the dates 28, 29, 30, 31 March 1 April (5 days), there were 1568 - 647 = 921 deaths registered with covid-19 on d. cert, where those deceased died UP TO 27th March (some deaths will have been registered in this time who died AFTER 27th March, but these are not counted, while others who died up to 27 March will not have been counted yet). We do not know when these people died, some will be more than 5 days before, so we should be careful about these data since they are not the same as the normal release.
However if these deaths occurred 23rd to 27th March (5 days lag), then the published daily deaths were:
23 54
24 87
25 41
26 115
27 181
= 468
Hence the number of deaths with covid-19 on death certificate is almost double (921 vs 468) the declared figures.
And the really interesting figure will be 'excess deaths'. Note that these fluctuate more than some people have suggested - this is not just killing people with days to live, respiratory illnesses shorten people's lives by at least a season
To week 13:
2020: 150k
2019: 146k (527k annual
2018: 165k (539k annual)
2017: 154k (533k annual)
2016: 144k (524k annual)
2015: 160k (539k annual)
So where you have a bad winter you will have more people die that year, their lives shortened by months or even years.
At the moment we are on 150k and should expect (minus covid-19) to get around 530k deaths this year on that trajectory.
That's not going to happen, so the question is how many extra deaths we do get. Week 13 shows 1000 extra deaths vs. 250 expected (from daily stats), so essentially almost none of the 5373 official deaths have gone into the ONS death stats.
It seems very obvious that the 5373 official deaths is significantly lower than the actual count of 'people dead while covid-19+', and also that since seasonal flu shortens actual people's lives that it's implausible that we won't have higher than usual annual deaths this year.
IMO if we keep it to 600k then that will be a good outcome.