Whatever the arguments all are agreed that the daily announcements of the death toll do not give the full picture. One of the issues is that the figure actually covers different dates of death, not the previous day. Reporting understandably lags events. The Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine develops, promotes and disseminates better evidence for healthcare, they go to the trouble to allocate the consolidated figures to the actual dates of death.

Daily reports generally add more to the previous two days (up to a maximum 300 deaths), and can add back to the previous week’s counts (the grey shaded area). Consistent with previous analyses, the data is flatlining consistent with hitting a peak,* and the structure of the data is similar across regions.

With the caveat that the most recent dates will still see higher numbers recorded as the reporting catches up, it does seem likely that in England the rate has peaked. We shall see in the next week whether that turns out to be optimistic or confirmed.