Carl Heneghan & Jason Oke

Dr Jason Oke is a Senior Statistician at Oxford's Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences. Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence-Based Medicine and Director of Studies for the Evidence-Based Health Care Programmes at Oxford.

A statistical tweak has just cut England's Covid death toll by 5,000

Public Health England has changed its definition of Covid deaths. Hitherto, it counted anyone who died who had previously had a laboratory-confirmed positive Covid-19 test – irrespective of how long ago that test was  The new definition introduces a time limit: the death of someone who tested positive no more than 28 days before death. The new data (here) means England has had 36,695