Estimating excess 1- year mortality from COVID-19 according to underlying conditions and age in England: a rapid analysis using NHS health records in 3.8 million adults

Amitava Banerjee; Laura Pasea; Steve Harris; Arturo Gonzalez-Izquierdo; Ana Torralbo; Laura Shallcross; Mahdad Noursadeghi; Deenan Pillay; Christina Pagel; Wai Keong Wong; Claudia Langenberg; Bryan Williams; Spiros Denaxas; Harry Hemingway

We believe, has a right to see and interact with rapidly emerging research knowledge relevant to the epidemic. We provide readily understandable estimates of background (pre-COVID) 1year risk of death according to number of underlying conditions, by age and sex. This provides context for the daily reports of the numbers of deaths (the 'numerator'); at the time of writing, there are 177 deaths from coronavirus in the UK. It is not widely appreciated that on average 1400 people die every day in the UK (37) . Of all those people dying within 1 year, it is likely that COVID-19 'brings forward' the death earlier in the year. In other words there are competing causes for the mortality. The public may not be used to seeing 'heat maps' of mortality risk which sets the numerator in the context of the population at risk, the denominator but this may change.