You asked
Please can you explain why the total 2020 death rate for England and Wales published on 5 February 2021 at 608,002 was significantly higher than the figure published on 1 December 2020 detailing deaths from the period 1 January 2020 up to 13 November 2020 (week 46/52) at 529,928? This is a difference of 78,074 in a month and a half and appears entirely disproportionate to former monthly death toll figures.
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We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
The difference between these figures is correct, however the publications are not directly comparable because the figure of 608,002 (published in the Annual deaths and mortality rates, 1938 to 2020) is based on the 2020 calendar year, whereas the figure of 529,928 for Week 1 to Week 46 of 2020 is taken from our weekly deaths publication which runs from 26th December 2019 (the start of Week 1 2020) to 1st January 2021 (the end of Week 53 2020).
You can view the latest weekly deaths for 2020 and 2021 for England and Wales in our provisional weekly deaths publicatiom. This publication shows that between Week 47 and Week 53 of 2020, there were a total of 84,186 deaths registered in England and Wales. This figure is in line with the numbers of death registrations published in our Monthly Mortality analysis publication.