Coronavirus – National Records publish number of deaths in the last week

National Records of Scotland has issued statistics setting out the number of deaths involving Covid-19 for the week from 10 – 16 January 2022.

As at 16 January, 12,675 deaths have been registered in Scotland where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, according to statistics published today by National Records of Scotland (NRS).

In the week 10 to 16 January, 132 deaths were registered that mentioned Covid-19 on the death certificate, an increase of 60 deaths from the previous week. 

91 deaths were aged 75 or older, 21 were aged 65 to 74, and 20 were under 65. 63 were female and 69 were male.

There were 14 deaths in North Lanarkshire, 13 in South Lanarkshire and 12 in City of Edinburgh. In total 25 council areas (out of 32) had at least one death involving Covid-19 last week.

77 deaths were in hospitals, 45 were in care homes and 10 were at home or a non-institutional setting.

Our monthly analysis shows that the age-standardised rate of Covid-related deaths was lower in December 2021 (66 per 100,000 people) compared to November 2021 (96 per 100,000 people). Throughout the pandemic, the highest rate of Covid-related deaths was 585 per 100,000 people in April 2020. 93% of people whose death involved Covid-19 (11,326 people) had at least one pre-existing condition with the most common condition being dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.   

Pete Whitehouse, Director of Statistical Services, said: “The latest figures show that last week there were 132 deaths where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. This is 60 more deaths than the previous week.

“The number of deaths from all causes registered in Scotland in this week was 1,501, which is 27, or 2%, fewer than the five year average.”

The large increase in deaths this week will be partly due to Registrars catching up on a backlog of death registrations following Registration office closures over the holiday period.  However, this does not explain all of the increase.  Our analysis of deaths by date of occurrence shows that the number of deaths involving Covid-19 began to increase in mid-December, from a low point of six deaths per day to reach an average of 13 deaths per day in early January.

There have been six deaths in Scotland in which the underlying cause of death was due to the adverse effects of vaccination against Covid-19, and one death where an adverse effect was mentioned on the death certificate. This is an increase of one from the figure reported last month. By 31 December 2021, statistics from Public Health Scotland state that 4.4 million people had been given at least one vaccine dose.