Coronavirus

Understanding excess deaths during a pandemic

Categories: Coronavirus, ONS
An image of building blogs arranged for the year 2020, with the end zero changing to a one to reflect the new year

To give meaningful comparisons of mortality over time, the Office for National Statistics uses a five-year average.  This is designed to show us the expected number of deaths for a given year. However, the pandemic has had a big impact on this average and of what a ‘normal’ year looks like. Sarah Caul explains why, for 2022, the year 2020 will not be included as part of our five-year average.

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Experimental migration data: No evidence of UK exodus

Categories: Coronavirus, migration, Population
Arrivals to a UK airport at border control

New figures suggest that although net international migration to the UK fell in 2020, there is no evidence of an exodus. Jay Lindop explains what can be interpreted from today’s experimental statistics, why they shouldn’t be compared to population figures and ongoing improvements to build and refine them.

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Coronavirus Deaths: Understanding ONS data on mortality and vaccination status

Categories: Coronavirus, Data, Office for National Statistics, ONS, Population
Stock vaccine image

Throughout the pandemic the Office for National Statistics has been providing timely data and analysis of the deaths caused by Coronavirus (COVID-19). During 2021 an important part of this work is measurement of mortality by vaccination status. In this post Charlotte Bermingham explains why we use internationally-recognised methods to ensure comparability across all our releases and how the analysis so far should be interpreted.

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