Coronavirus is not listed as the cause of death for every person who dies in the UK, despite a Facebook video claiming otherwise. However, according to preliminary data, the virus was the leading cause of death in 2020 in England and Wales.
The video (here), which has been shared hundreds of times, shows a woman telling her audience that every death is currently recorded as a COVID-19 death. She uses this claim as a basis for her theory that the pandemic ‘has been planned for years and years and years’ and that virus cases are ‘numbers they keep making up’. This check will focus on the remark about COVID-19 deaths. Other claims made in the video fall outside the scope of this check, but some have already been dropped in previous checks by Reuters (here, here).
In the video, which was posted on January 24, the woman says: ‘Everything is increasing, except for natural deaths, because you can now die from nothing but coronavirus. You can not die of heart disease, you can not die of stroke, you can not die of flu, or pneumonia; everything is put down as COVID. ”
This is not correct, which even makes some exaggeration possible.
A graph from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows the largest causes of death in December 2020 in England and Wales, compared to the average of five years (here).
The graph shows that COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in December 2020, for the second consecutive month. However, deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, ischemic (coronary) heart disease, kerobrovascular disease (such as stroke) and certain cancers are also recorded in the graph. Influenza and pneumonia are also listed, although deaths in this category may be much less than the five-year average. Reuters wrote in a previous fact check (here) why flu cases in the UK are lower this year.
The ONS reported that, on preliminary data, the leading cause of death in 2020 was in both England and Wales COVID-19, accounting for 12.1% of all deaths in England and 11.7% of all deaths in Wales. Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease were the second most common cause of death in both England (11.6% of all deaths) and Wales (10.4% of all deaths).
VERDICT
Untrue. Coronavirus is not the only cause of death listed in the UK. Many other causes are recorded. Preliminary data from the ONS show that in 2020, however, COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in England and Wales.
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