The government has paused announcing daily coronavirus death toll figures amid accusations the data is not accurate.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock ordered an urgent review into how Public Health England (PHE) calculates daily figures on Thursday after researchers claimed there were ‘statistical flaws’.

Experts claim PHE has been ‘over-exaggerating’ fatalities as it counts people as victims if they die of any cause at any time after testing positive for the virus.

Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales only include those who die within 28 days of a positive test, meaning England’s death toll may appear to be much worse.

The Department for Health and Social Care said yesterday daily figures would come to a halt while the issue is ‘resolved’.

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A statement read: ‘The Secretary of State has today, 17 July, asked PHE to urgently review their estimation of daily death statistics.

‘Currently, the daily deaths measure counts all people who have tested positive for coronavirus and since died, with no cut-off between time of testing and date of death.

‘There have been claims that the lack of cut-off may distort the current daily deaths number.

‘We are therefore pausing the publication of the daily figure while this is resolved.’

The UK coronavirus death toll currently stands at 45,233 after another 114 people were reported to have lost their lives on Friday.

Dr Yoon Loke, a pharmacologist at the University of East Anglia, first raised the alarm that the death toll may be ‘over-exaggerated’ in a blog post on Thursday evening.

He wrote: ‘It seems that PHE regularly looks for people on the NHS database who have ever tested positive, and simply checks to see if they are still alive or not.

‘PHE does not appear to consider how long ago the COVID test result was, nor whether the person has been successfully treated in hospital and discharged to the community.

‘Anyone who has tested COVID positive but subsequently died at a later date of any cause will be included on the PHE COVID death figures.’

Researchers say this is the reason why PHE figures ‘vary substantially from day to day’.

They also claim that around 80,000 recovered patients in the community are continuing to be monitored by PHE for the daily death statistics – despite the fact that many are elderly and may die of something else.

Experts said: ‘It’s time to fix this statistical flaw that leads to an over-exaggeration of Covid-associated deaths.

‘One reasonable approach would be to define community Covid-related deaths as those that occurred within 21 days of a Covid positive test result.

‘In summary, PHE’s definition of the daily death figures means that everyone who has ever had Covid at any time must die with Covid too.

‘So, the Covid death toll in Britain up to July 2020 will eventually exceed 290k, if the follow-up of every test-positive patient is of long enough duration.’

Christina Pagel, a mathematician and professor of operational research at University College London (UCL) and a member of the Independent Sage group, has argued that the way PHE calculates data could become a problem over time, but does not believe there has been a ‘massive distortion’.

She added: ‘For Matt Hancock to suddenly be launching a massive inquiry is odd.

‘The Department of Health website says quite clearly how each country is doing its death calculations, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to him. That’s what I find really odd.’

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