At least 290 people have died in Wigan with Covid-19, data shows

The most common place of death with Covid-19 was in hospital, with 229 lives registered was coming to an end there.

A total of 52 people with Covid-19 have died in care homes, seven have lost their lives at home and three pssed way in a hospice.

The data shows that just under one in five deaths in Wigan registered up to May 23 this year have involved the coronavirus in some way.

The borough’s hospitals have also faced a particularly tough situation.

A massive 78.7 per cent of the deaths involving Covid-19 in Wigan occurred in hospitals up to the week ending May 22.

Across England and Wales as a whole, the figure was 64.2 per cent.

The figures show that 30 per cent of all the deaths that have occurred in Wigan’s hospitals up to the week ending May 22 this year have involved the coronavirus.

However, there are some signs that the pressures doctors and nurses have faced could be easing, as the NHS reports that Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh (WWL) NHS Foundation Trust have now not registered a single death with the virus for four days.

Care homes, though, seem to have fared better than average, with 17.87 per cent of deaths involving Covid-19 in the borough occurring there, a figure much lower than the England and Wales wide one of 29.1 per cent.

Despite the appalling scale of the human tragedy which lies behind such figures, the latest ONS stats do suggest that Covid-19 mortality rates are coming down across England and Wales.

The provisional number of deaths in the two countries with Covid-19 for the week ending May 22 was 2,589, a decrease from the 3,810 registered the previous week.

The percentage of all deaths which involved Covid-19 in the two weeks also fell, from 26.1 per cent to 21.1 per cent.

And although the number of excess deaths for the most recent week of statistics remains more than 2,000 above the five-year average, that is a significant fall from the dark weeks in mid-April when for a fortnight weekly deaths were more than 10,000 over the figure typically recorded in the previous five years.

For care homes across the borough the comparable figure is 14.69 per cent.

In total, across the borough there were 1,523 deaths registered in 2020 up to the week ending May 22.

However, the North West continues to be comparatively-severely affected by the pandemic, having the second-highest number of deaths invoving the coronavirus in the most recent week of statistics behind the South East.

The region also recorded the second-highest all-cause mortality figure for the week ending May 22.

The ONS also published a number of statistics related to the pandemic which do not have local detail.

These show that the number of registered deaths in the most recent week which mention Covid-19 is the lowest for seven weeks.

The virus is continuing to take its highest toll among the elderly, with those over 90 still accounting for the biggest number of deaths with Covid-19 in the latest week for which numbers are available.

Across the year as a whole 286,759 deaths were recorded up to May 22 nationwide, more than 50,000 higher than the five-year average.

Out of those 43,837 mention Covid-19 on the death certificate, or 15.3 per cent of the all-cause mortality figure.

The ONS stats differ slightly from the daily totals being published during the pandemic as they are based on the formal process of death registration and also take into account deaths occurring outside of hospital.

This is also why the statistics are released a couple of weeks after the period they cover.

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