UK to possibly scrap daily coronavirus death toll following reports of ‘over-exaggerating’ count

"The conclusions of the review, which was ordered by Matt Hancock after it emerged officials were ‘over-exaggerating’ deaths from the virus, are expected this week," reported The Telegraph. "One expected recommendation would be to stop daily reporting altogether and move to a weekly official death toll instead, a government source said on Sunday night."

An investigation was requested by the UK Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock into Public Health England’s daily count handling.

"It came after Oxford University experts revealed a significant proportion of the daily out-of-hospital death toll relates to patients who recovered from the virus weeks or months earlier," The Telegraph noted. "Under the previous system, anyone who has ever tested positive for the virus in England was automatically counted as a coronavirus death when they died, even if the death was from a car accident."

This was not the way the counts were conducted in all of the UK as Wales and Scotland would not add coronavirus as the cause of death if people tested positive for the virus 28 or more days before their death.

If a patient died after that period of time, they were "not automatically considered to have died from the virus," according to Reuters who added, "Britain, one of the countries hardest hit by the virus, reported more than 1,000 new COVID-19 infections on Sunday, its highest daily increase since June, taking the total number of cases past 310,000."

One proposed solution is to move from a daily official death toll to a weekly one.

Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister was warned earlier in the year by his top advisors that the Chinese Communist Party lied about the size of the outbreak in China.

"Mr Johnson has been warned by scientific advisers that China’s officially declared statistics on the number of cases of coronavirus could be ‘downplayed by a factor of 15 to 40 times,’" reported The Daily Mail. "And [the British government] believes China is seeking to build its economic power during the pandemic with ‘predatory offers of help’ [to] countries around the world.’"

Top officials in the UK were allegedly very angry about China attempting to blame the outbreak on the United States.

"There is a disgusting disinformation campaign going on and it is unacceptable," a source told The Mail. "They [the Chinese government] know they have got this badly wrong and rather than owning it they are spreading lies."