More than 650,000 deaths were registered in the UK in 2022 - 9% more than 2019. 

This represents one of the largest excess death levels outside the pandemic in 50 years.

Though far below peak pandemic levels, it has prompted questions about why more people are still dying than normal.

Data indicates pandemic effects on health and NHS pressures are among the leading explanations. 

Covid is still killing people, but is involved in fewer deaths now than at the start of the pandemic. Roughly 38,000 deaths involved Covid in 2022 compared with more than 95,000 in 2020.

We are still seeing more deaths overall than would be expected based on recent history. The difference in 2022 - compared with 2020 and 2021 - is that Covid deaths were one of several factors, rather than the main explanation for this excess. 

Many suggestions have been put forward for why there have been about 22,500 more deaths between April and August than would normally be expected, but there is little agreement so far on the cause or causes. A spokesperson for the UK government’s Department of Health and Social Care, for example, says: “Analysis is ongoing, however early investigation suggests circulatory diseases and diabetes may be partly responsible for the majority of excess deaths.”

But Adrian Boyle, president-elect at the UK’s Royal College of Emergency Medicine doesn’t agree that conditions like this, potentially worsened by coronavirus lockdowns delaying routine appointments, are likely to be the cause. “It takes time to die from cancer, it takes time to die from heart failure,” he says. “These are all things that may have got worse during lockdown, but I’m not sure that is going to be driving the sudden and precipitous increase that we’ve seen in deaths this year.”

“The data suggest that it is very likely that something substantial is happening,” says Michael Murphyat the London School of Economics.

So, researchers are scrambling to figure out what is going on, with National Health Service (NHS) problems, an ageing population, heatwaves and a resurgence of covid-19 all also being mooted as possible causes for the sudden hike in deaths. The fear is that this trend could worsen in the winter when healthcare systems are typically under most pressure.

READ MORE:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2335991-there-are-thousands-more-uk-deaths-than-usual-and-we-dont-know-why/

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As a world-leading authority on virus evolution, Eddie Holmes wasn't surprised when COVID-19 first appeared.

Like many people who study the emergence of infectious diseases, Professor Holmes believes SARS-CoV-2 was an accident waiting to happen.

But in the years since he became one of the first people in the world to publicly share the SARS-CoV-2 genome, much of the way the virus has evolved has taken him by surprise.

"The level to which it's become more infectious is something that I would never have predicted," said Professor Holmes, a virologist at the University of Sydney. 

"It's extraordinary."

This week marks three years since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global public health emergency.

In that time, the virus has spawned five variants of concern, each more transmissible or potent than the last.