Will the UK end up with the most coronavirus deaths in Europe?

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A member of medical staff takes a swab from a person in a car at an NHS coronavirus disease (COVID-19) testing facility, as the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) continues, in Wolverhampton, Britain, April 7, 2020. REUTERS/Carl Recine     TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
An NHS worker takes a swab in a car at a coronavirus testing facility in Wolverhampton. (Reuters)

The UK will have the most coronavirus deaths in Europe but almost half the number that were originally predicted, say researchers.

The Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington initially forecast 66,000 COVID-19 deaths in the UK, in research published last week.

But in revised figures published at the weekend, the US scientists drastically reduced their estimated death toll for the UK, bringing it down to 37,400, resulting in fierce criticism of the model by British experts.

That number of deaths, forecast to take place by 4 August, would still make the UK the worst country in Europe for COVID-19 fatalities.

The IHME predicts Italy will have the second highest death toll with 20,000, followed by Spain and the Netherlands with 18,000 each and France with 16,000.

According to Johns Hopkins University, there have so far been 10,612 COVID-19 deaths in the UK, compared to 19,899 in Italy, 17,489 in Spain, 2,833 in the Netherlands and 14,393 in France.

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The IHME was criticised last week when it forecast 66,000 deaths in the UK, a figure disputed by one of the government’s scientific advisers, Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London.

The US research team explained the large drop in predicted UK deaths by saying it had updated its modelling.

It said: “Our initial release of EEA country predictions included reported daily deaths through 5 April. For the United Kingdom, daily death data during the week prior to 5 April showed sharp and steadily increasing cumulative daily deaths.

“Since our last release, we have been able to include four more days of reported daily deaths for the UK.”

Two women wear protective face masks as they walk past the flowers outside Buckingham Palace in London on April 12, 2020, during the nationwide lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus pandemic. - The Prime Minister left hospital on Sunday to convalesce from coronavirus at Chequers, the country estate of British prime ministers, officials said, a week after he was admitted and then spent three days in intensive care. (Photo by Tolga AKMEN / AFP) (Photo by TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images)
Two women wear protective face masks as they walk past the flowers outside Buckingham Palace in London on Sunday. (AFP via Getty Images)

It said a slower rate of increase in deaths and more accurate data from other nations “has resulted in notably lower average projections for the UK”.

In the UK, scientists questioned the IHME model after it revised its predicted deaths.

Professor Babak Javid, from the Tsinghua University School of Medicine in Beijing and consultant in infectious diseases at Cambridge University Hospitals, said: “The IHME model is extremely sensitive to the base underlying assumptions.

‘Model assumptions should be investigated’

“A few days ago, when the predicted UK deaths were about 67,000, one base assumption was that the model assumed only about 800 ICU beds available in the UK, which was a massive shortfall.

“Checking today – with the revised downward projection of 37,000 deaths – the base assumption is that the UK has 6,800 ICU beds available.

“The predictive power of the model is likely to be highly dependent on how accurate those assumptions about ICU beds are.

“The fact that underlying assumptions in the model vary by such magnitudes over short spaces of time should be investigated.”

Statistician Sir David Spiegelhalter, professor at the Winton Centre for Risk and Evidence Communication at the University of Cambridge, said: “Although reporting delays make it difficult to track the epidemic with confidence, we appear to be following a slightly worse trajectory than Italy and it is plausible that we might end up with the most in-hospital COVID deaths in Europe.

“However, the IHME projections still seem unduly pessimistic, even after their recent dramatic change.

“For example, their model is saying that today we should be needing 64,000 hospital beds while there are only 18,000 available – although our hospitals are undoubtedly under a lot of pressure, this does not seem to fit reality.

‘Major flaws in their models’

“Their curve-fitting procedure currently seems too sensitive to small changes in data and assumptions to make it reliable for the UK.”

And Keith Neal, emeritus professor in the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the University of Nottingham, said: “Redoing their prediction in under a week strongly suggests major flaws in their models.

“The number of deaths each day in their original calculations have been just above their lower limit so they have been seriously over-predicting UK deaths since I first saw their model.

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“This is not the first model to be shown to have got their projections seriously wrong.

“The daily trend in the UK appears to be slowing but we need another week to be sure, especially with possible reporting delays over the holiday period.

“It is likely that the UK will have one of the largest number of total deaths solely because we have the second largest population in Western Europe and EU countries – only Germany has a larger population.

“The important figure is the death rate per million and the total number of deaths. On this count, Belgium seems to be heading for a serious problem like Italy and Spain.”

Belgium has had 3,903 deaths from coronavirus, according to Johns Hopkins University.

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