Scared by some stats I saw on Twitter

[pineapplevape]

I'm not a medic or a scientist so I'm really hoping that this is somehow incorrect.

Seven children died of covid in one week. Week up to 29 October.

twitter.com/TigressEllie/status/1458170924600020998

In the comments it does seem to be covid as a cause, not died within 28 days or anything, covid listed as a factor.

Reading that has really scared me.

No I'm not an anti-vaxxer / pro mandatory vaxxer / pro lockdown / anti lockdown or whatever.

Anyone with more knowledge of statistics able to look into this??

According to the ONS (which may be where those figures are from?)

"We use the term “involving COVID-19” when referring to deaths that had COVID-19 mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, whether as an underlying cause or not."

So 'involving COVID' doesn't necessarily mean it caused the death. Unfortunately with COVID rates so high among young people at the moment, it stands to reason that there is now a higher chance that young people dying for ANY reason could happen to have a COVID infection as well.

Hopefully someone with a bit more insight will be along shortly!

I wonder where that chart comes from.

ONS has 6 deaths for age 0-24 years in the same week (end 29 Oct 21). 2x under 1, 2x age 1-14, 2x age 15-24.

I'm not sure if ONS data is saying "within 28 days" or "Covid was primary cause" or "Covid was important contributing cause"

Would merely one death in under 18s be "more acceptable"? if one is unfortunate but tolerable, why is 6 so different?

Is there any way of finding out for sure what this data actually means??

Like was it contributing cause, was it primary cause or something else??

Yeah it's ONS figures

Its from this,

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales

and is the table of deaths by week of occurrence, of those with Covid mentioned on death certificate.

Unhelpfully it lumps 15-19 year olds together, so your "7" includes 3 in that age group so not necessarily children.

Meanwhile, a child is tragically killed by a dog and the media are all over it.

Anyone know what covid mentioned on the death certificate means??

@vera99

Meanwhile, a child is tragically killed by a dog and the media are all over it.

As they bloody well should be

@pineapplevape

Anyone know what covid mentioned on the death certificate means??

Surely it's that if the child/young person tests positive within 28 days of death? Unfortunately childhood diseases do kill children and young people every day - if they test positive for Covid at the same time it will be mentioned.

@HesterShaw1totally agreed. What a sad, and disgusting, piece of news that was.

@HesterShaw1 exactly but one child a day from Covid let's not rock the recovery boat and force people to wear masks say.

Would merely one death in under 18s be "more acceptable"? if one is unfortunate but tolerable, why is 6 so different?

Disingenuous and pedantic. Do we really need to spell it out?

@HesterShaw1
I don't know, I don't think it's within 28 days of death.

What I am trying to ascertain is what 'where covid was mentioned on the death certificate' actually means. Not being scientific myself I can't work out what is behind this worrying data.

It's not as worrying if it is indeed within 28 days of a pos test. Extremely worrying if covid was listed as a main cause on death certs.

Can anyone tell me how to find out??

I don’t know for sure but my dad died recently, with Covid but not “of” it, and it wasn’t listed as a cause on the death certificate.

Where covid was mentioned on the death certificate means that in some way covid may have contributed it doesn't mean it caused it so far example you could have a child terminally ill and on end of life care who catches covid and covid could potentially bring forward their death, may only be a day or 2 but would still need to be mentioned on the death certificate and would show on those stats.

This is a guide on what info goes in each part of a UK death certificate. I assume including covid would mean death deaths where covid was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate

geekymedics.com/certification-death-uk-osce-guide/

Covid could be the main cause of death for those 7 children, but equally it could have been something else but covid perhaps hastened the death.

I think people have lost sight of how many people be that children or adults die in any one day of anything because we don’t see stats on death for any other illness! Obviously any death is tragic but I do think all these threads and twitter stats lack important context.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/deathswherecovid19wasmentionedonthedeathcertificate

In those stats, Covid could either have been recorded as the underlying cause of death, or recorded a contributory factor but not the main identified cause. Both count as a mention on death cert for the purposes of that data.

Thank you.

I wonder if looking at figures for previous years for child deaths would give some inkling.

Horrible and very scary topic.

In 2019, 2,390 infant deaths (aged under 1 year) and 907 child deaths (aged 1 to 15 years) occurred in England and Wales.

This BMJ article says that 1550 in an almost 6 month period in 2020 wasn't different from 2019.

This says "There were 2,636 infant deaths (aged under 1 year) that occurred in England and Wales in 2017, a decrease of 0.6% compared with 2,651 in 2016."

"There were 3,251 deaths registered to children aged under five years in the UK in 2019"

2000 "excess deaths" among children in UK in 2018.

I have a strong feeling that like all the other age groups, excess deaths are way down for children, in UK, in 2021.

It was inevitable that child deaths relating to COVID increased this autumn because of the removal of all mitigations, and lack of vaccinations, in schools.

Sorry but I’m not sure why you’re so surprised OP.

Obviously all of those seven deaths are tragic.

This from ONS says how the death data is compiled. It says 92% of certificates stating covid have it as the main underlying cause. It's from Feb though.

www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/whetherthosewhohavediedfromacaraccidentwithcovid19willbecountedinonsstatistics?:uri=aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/whetherthosewhohavediedfromacaraccidentwithcovid19willbecountedinonsstatistics

@tigressellie compiles covid data on Twitter and explains some of the disparities- might be worth a look. Some of the deaths take a long time for ONS to record due to inquests and coroners reports. Very much hoping this doesn't mean deaths are even higher for October.