Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the proportion of people who have died from covid-19 who would have died within 12 months in the event that they had not contracted covid-19.
The Department and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) jointly produced the paper ‘Direct and Indirect Impacts of COVID-19 on Excess Deaths and Morbidity: Executive Summary’ for the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies in which the ONS estimated that of the 32,000 COVID-19 deaths, which occurred between 21 March and 1 May 2020, 25,000 of them were deaths that would not have occurred otherwise within 12 months. Therefore, 7,000 of the 32,000 COVID-19 deaths are deaths which would have likely occurred within 12 months, had they not contracted COVID-19.