The COVID Diaries – 35 30th April
This week the number of UK deaths due to COVID-19 jumped by nearly 5,000 to 26,097 in one day because belatedly figures for non-hospital deaths that had tested positive for the virus were included in the total.
But sadly even this grim total is too low, as it does not include the many deaths of people who were not tested. The Office for National Statistics data on death registrations is the most definitive record and, although inevitably delayed by around 10 days, these figures would be expected to take the current total to significantly more than 30,000.
Meanwhile in the United States a row between Donald Trump and his election campaign manager, Brad Parscale, over a recent drop in the president’s poll numbers apparently resulted in Trump threatening Parscale with a lawsuit.
This happened as the US death toll from the pandemic reached 50,000 in three months and the fallout continued from Trump’s suggestion that taking disinfectant internally could be tested as a possible treatment for coronavirus, even though it is potentially lethal.