COVID-19 Insight 12: Our data

Deaths notified by care homes

Source: CQC death notifications submitted 10/04/2020 to 02/07/2021

The chart shows the number of death notifications of people in care homes flagged with COVID-19 submitted each day up to 2 July 2021, with a seven-day moving average line showing the smoothed trend. The numbers of notifications of deaths appear to have peaked for the second time by late January 2021 and have been steadily falling since then.

Death notifications of people detained under the Mental Health Act (MHA)

All providers registered with CQC must notify us about deaths of people who are detained, or liable to be detained, under the MHA. Based on date of notification, from 1 March 2020 to 2 July 2021, we have been notified of 168 deaths that mental health providers indicated were suspected or confirmed to be involving COVID-19 (an increase of two since we reported in June). A further eight deaths of detained patients involving COVID-19 were reported by other (non-mental health) providers (no further recorded deaths since we last reported).

Of the 581 notifications from mental health providers in the 2020/21 period (covering all causes of death from 1 March 2020 to 2 July 2021), 466 were from NHS organisations, of which 127 deaths were indicated as involving COVID-19, and 115 were from independent providers, of which 41 deaths were involving COVID-19.

We have identified 34 detained patients whose deaths have been notified to us from 1 March 2020 to 2 July 2021 who had a learning disability and/or were autistic: the majority (23) were not identified as involving confirmed or suspected COVID-19. Of these people, most also had a mental health diagnosis. Please note that these patients were identified both from a specific box being ticked on the notification form and a review of diagnoses in the free text of the form.

The chart shows the number of deaths notified to CQC based on the date of death. These figures will be lower than the counts of notifications presented in the previous section due to time lags in reporting and data cleaning. Data may be updated over time and therefore successive extracts may lead to changes in overall numbers.

We will also be reporting on the deaths of detained patients and deaths of patients subject to community treatment orders from 1 April 2020 to 31 March 2021 in our MHA annual report later in the year. This report will include further information about the causes of deaths, including COVID-19. The cause of deaths in detention are usually determined through the coroners’ courts, which leads to a delay for accurate statistical reporting.

Death notifications of people in services caring for people with a learning disability or autistic people

In June 2020, we first published data on the number of notifications of deaths of people who were receiving care from services that provide support for people with a learning disability or autistic people between 10 April and 15 May 2020. We have subsequently published a number of updates, extending the time period each time. This issue now covers deaths between 10 April 2020 and 31 March 2021.

This data is derived from death notifications submitted to CQC. A proportion of notifications are submitted as scans or are handwritten and cannot be included in this analysis. This means the numbers reported in this appendix and previous updates may be below the true numbers of deaths. In the 2020/21 period the proportion of unextractable notifications was 5.5%, and in the 2019/20 period it was 6.7%.

We are taking action to improve the way we capture and process information from providers through our notifications.

While unextractable notifications are not represented in published figures, throughout the pandemic we have used this information, alongside other information and any concerns received, to assess risks and make decisions about where to inspect, taking action to protect people where necessary.

The inclusion of a death notification in published figures is based on providers recording that a person had a learning disability or autism on the notification submitted to CQC.

We identified notifications of the deaths of at least 1,633 people with a learning disability or autistic people from services identified as caring for people with learning disabilities or autistic people between 10 April 2020 and 31 March 2021. This is 3% higher than the 1,581 deaths notified in the comparable period in 2019/20.

Of the 1,633 people with a learning disability or autistic people that we have identified as having died during the period in question, 486 were identified by the provider as deaths involving COVID-19 (either suspected or confirmed), and 1,147 were not identified as involving COVID-19.

Compared with the last time we updated this analysis (which covered the period 10 April to 16 November 2020), there now appear to be fewer deaths not involving COVID-19 in most age categories in 2020/21 than there were in the comparator period (2019/20 – comparing the purple columns with the dark blue segments).

Source: notifications of deaths under Statutory Notification 16 to CQC, 10 April 2020 to 31 March 2021, and comparable period in 2019/20.

Note: no bar is shown for 2020/21 (suspected or confirmed COVID-19) in the under-25 age category, as low numbers have been suppressed. The data covers all relevant service types but the vast majority come from community or residential social care.

Of the 1,633 people with a learning disability or autistic people that we have identified as having died, 1,592 were receiving care from adult social care settings.

We only show the breakdown of service types for adult social care. The remaining 41 deaths were of people notified to us by types of service in much lower numbers. To avoid identifying individuals we have not included them here.

ONS data on all weekly deaths in England (COVID and non-COVID) compared with the average for 2015-2019

Source: ONS COVID/non-COVID 2020 and 2021 death data and 2015-2019 death data. Week 25, 2021: week ending 25 June 2021.