The coronavirus pandemic appears to be killing more than twice the number of people recorded in daily figures from hospitals, according to the latest official death statistics for England and Wales.
The data suggest the extent of the crisis is deeper than previously thought, particularly in care homes — where a third of all deaths were recorded in the week to April 17.
In that week, 22,351 deaths were registered in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics, the highest figure since comparable weekly data started in 1993 and worse than any figure in similar data of the past 50 years. The average for the comparable week from 2015-2019 was 10,497.