COVID-19 Insight 13: Our data

Deaths notified by care homes in England

The chart shows the number of death notifications of people in care homes flagged with COVID-19 submitted each day up to 3 September 2021, with a seven-day moving average line showing the smoothed trend. The numbers of notifications of deaths peaked for the second time by late January 2021 and fell steadily until late April 2021. Numbers have remained at low levels since then.

Death notifications of people detained under the Mental Health Act (MHA)

All providers registered with CQC must notify us about deaths of people who are detained, or liable to be detained, under the MHA.

Based on date of notification, from 1 March 2020 to 3 September 2021, we have been notified of 169 deaths that mental health providers indicated were suspected or confirmed to be involving COVID-19 (an increase of one since we reported in July). A further ten deaths of detained patients involving COVID-19 were reported by other (non-mental health) providers (an increase of two since we reported in July).

Of the 623 notifications from mental health providers received in the 2020/21 period (covering all causes of death from 1 March 2020 to 3 September 2021), 498 were from NHS organisations, of which 127 deaths were indicated as involving COVID-19, and 125 were from independent providers, of which 42 deaths were involving COVID-19.

We have identified 36 detained patients whose deaths have been notified to us from 1 March 2020 to 3 September 2021 who had a learning disability and/or were autistic: the majority (25) were not identified as involving confirmed or suspected COVID-19. Of these people, most also had a mental health diagnosis. Please note that these patients were identified both from a specific box being ticked on the notification form and a review of diagnoses in the free text of the form.

Weekly MHA deaths in England (COVID-19 and non-COVID-19): 1 March 2020 to 3 September 2021

The chart shows the number of deaths notified to CQC based on the date of death. These figures will be lower than the counts of notifications presented in the previous section due to time lags in reporting and data cleaning. Data may be updated over time and therefore successive extracts may lead to changes in overall numbers.

We will also be reporting on the deaths of detained patients and deaths of patients subject to community treatment orders from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 in our MHA annual report later in the year. This report will include further information about the causes of deaths, including COVID-19. The cause of deaths in detention is usually determined through the coroners’ courts, which leads to a delay for accurate statistical reporting.

ONS data on all weekly deaths in England (COVID and non-COVID) compared with the average for 2015-2019

Source: ONS COVID/non-COVID 2020 and 2021 death data and 2015-2019 death data. Week 34, 2021: week ending 27 August 2021.