The UK government's official coronavirus death toll is to be revised down by more than 5,000, due to new guidelines defining what constitutes a death due to the epidemic, The Guardian reports.
Until now, anyone who died following a positive diagnosis was counted as a victim of the epidemic, regardless of whether or not he might have recovered from the virus before his demise, and subsequently died of other causes. New rules state that only deaths that occur within 28 days of a diagnosis will be recorded as Covid-19 deaths.
As such, the government's official death toll will drop from 46,706 to 41,329, a reduction of 11.5%.
However, some experts continue to claim that the real death toll is far higher, basing their argument on the "excess death toll," which compares deaths this year to the corresponding number over the last five years on average. The UK's excess death toll is more than 65,000 between March and June of this year.