One in four coronavirus victims not directly killed by the bug, expert says

Professor Sir David Spiegelhalter, chairman of the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication, University of Cambridge, said that some 6,000 deaths had been "exported" to the community due to the reduction of hospital services.

Extra deaths

The ONS data published on Tuesday found that the number of deaths in England and Wales has exceeded normal levels by nearly 47,000 during the pandemic.

It shows a total of 108,345 deaths were registered in the two nations between March 21 - towards the start of the outbreak - and May 1 2020.

This was 46,494 more deaths than the average for this period in the previous five years - with Covid-19 responsible for 33,257 of these excess deaths, or 71.5 per cent.

Sir David said that the proportion of excess deaths that did not list coronavirus on the death certificate had stayed "reasonably constant" - between 25 per cent and 30 per cent.

But he said this suggests many of them could be indirect deaths as a result of the virus.

Many of them are indirect deaths, collateral damage of the health service disruption

Professor Sir David SpiegelhalterCambridge University

"If people had learnt to put it on the death certificate, you would have expected that number to go down and it hasn't gone down a lot," he said.

"It's a constant factor that 25, 30 per cent of the extra deaths have not been labelled as Covid.

"That could suggest to many that this is because many of them are indirect deaths, collateral damage of the health service disruption."

Commenting on the ONS data, Sir David said a drop in hospital deaths at the same time as an increase in fatalities elsewhere suggested some 6,000 deaths had been "exported back to the community because of the closure of the hospitals".

A third of the "staggering" 30,000 excess deaths in care homes and homes had included Covid-19 on the death certificate, he told reporters.

"While some of those may be under-diagnosis, we have got a huge number of essentially unexplained extra deaths in homes and care homes," he said.

The latest figures say there were 17,953 deaths registered across England and Wales in the week up to May 1 - a decrease for the second week running.

But Nick Stripe, head of health analysis at the ONS, told BBC News this is about 8,000 above the average expected for this time of year.

He said: "So it is actually the seventh highest weekly total since this data set started in 1993, so we have had four out of the top seven weeks in the last four weeks."