More people in England and Wales are now dying of flu and pneumonia than Covid

More people are now dying from flu and pneumonia than Covid in England and Wales for the first time since the second wave took off, official figures revealed today.

Office for National Statistics data showed the virus was mentioned on 260 death certificates that occurred in the week ending April 23 — down 30 per cent on the week before. 

But Covid was only listed as the underlying cause for 176 of the victims. For comparison, flu and pneumonia was behind 278 deaths in the same seven-day spell but mentioned on 1,203 certificates.

Covid was the leading cause of death during the second wave, claiming more than 1,000 lives a day at the peak of the crisis in January.

Experts said a successful vaccine roll-out forcing down Covid deaths combined with more mixing leading to a resurgence in the  flu was behind the common illness now causing more deaths than the pandemic virus.

The promising figures will inevitably pile more pressure on Boris Johnson to speed-up his ultra-cautious lockdown exit strategy, which will not permit holidays or pubs and restaurants to serve indoors until May 17. Restrictions will remain in place until June 21, at the earliest.

Scientists are already predicting the successful vaccine roll-out — which has already jabbed 34million Britons —may mean the country never needs another blanket lockdown. 

Professor Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London epidemiologist and SAGE adviser who warned hundreds of thousands could die if Britain didn’t go into lockdown in March 2020, said he thinks it is unlikely the country will have to shut down again. 

In other coronavirus developments: 

• The entire Indian delegation that travelled to London for the G7 summit must self-isolate after two Covid cases were detected;
• Top SAGE adviser Professor Neil Ferguson said it was unlikely the UK will have to lock down again because the vaccine rollout is going so well;
• One in five adults experienced some form of depression at the start of 2021 — double what was recorded before the pandemic. 

Doctors list a disease such as Covid as the underlying cause of death when they consider it to be to blame for someone dying. 

They can, however, also mention other conditions as contributors, meaning they were not the main cause but played a role.

Professor Lawrence Young, a molecular biologist at Warwick Medical School, said flu and pneumonia were now behind more deaths than Covid because of vaccinations and lockdown easing measures.

‘There is no question that the vaccine roll-out is driving down Covid deaths,’ he told MailOnline.

‘What we are seeing is that vaccination is clearly biting now and having a massive impact not only on the level of the disease but also on the spread.’

He added: ‘I think (the rise in deaths due to flu) is a consequence of as you ease lockdown restrictions, you are going to see more mixing and more virus spread.

‘We have all been living in isolation over the winter. Often, what happens with these infections is they travel around through the year in new forms and boost our immunity against them.

‘But in a year without mixing this hasn’t been the case – a load of us have not had colds we would normally get.

‘As a result, some people are more vulnerable to infections but have not had that boost you get from infection every year may be more at risk.’

Studies suggest the Covid jabs roll-out may be arresting the spread of the virus even as lockdown measures are eased because more than three in five Britons have been jabbed and they are highly effective (at least 70 per cent) at blocking infections.

On the other hand, a mass roll-out was also carried out for flu vaccines. But these are generally less effective at blocking infections with the common virus (possibly as low as 30 to 40 per cent), giving it a window to resurge once people start mixing more regularly. 

The promising ONS figures come after the UK yesterday recorded just four Covid deaths, and one on Monday, in a sign the virus is ebbing away.

Experts cautioned these low figures may be down to the early May bank holiday, because fewer people would have been available to process paperwork to register a death. 

But they said the numbers were still a positive sign that deaths were falling amid dropping Covid cases and hospitalisations.

ONS figures showed Covid only made up 2.6 per cent of all fatalities recorded in England and Wales two weeks ago, compared to more than 40 per cent at the peak of the second wave. 

Three out of nine regions in England — North East, East Midlands and the South West — went at least one day without a single Covid fatality occurring over the latest week.

And eight out of nine went at least one day with just one Covid death occurring, with only the West Midlands not hitting this level.

There were 9,941 deaths from all-causes — including dementia, heart disease and Covid — which was 5.3 per cent below the five-year average, or 556 fewer deaths, for the number of deaths expected at this time of year.

Experts had said all deaths were likely to fall below average for some time because more people had died earlier than they otherwise would have without the spread of the virus.

There were also 26 deaths involving Covid among care home residents, almost half the 44 recorded in the previous seven-day period.

Amid the promising figures Mr Johnson is yet to budge on his lockdown easing strategy, despite insisting he will be led by ‘data not dates’.

Professor Neil Ferguson, the SAGE adviser and Imperial College London epidemiologist whose warning that hundreds of thousands could die if Britain didn’t go into lockdown in March 2020, said he thinks it is unlikely the country will have to shut down again thanks to vaccinations.

He admitted to the BBC there ‘may be a need to roll back on some of these measures’ if a vaccine-resistant variant were to appear later in the year but he didn’t think it would happen.

To cut the risk of this the Government will, in autumn, offer a third jab to everyone over the age of 50 or in a clinically vulnerable group.

Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, is currently supervising trials of two possible ways to do this, including third doses of existing jabs or using an updated vaccine specifically tailored to target new variants. The current jabs are modelled on the Wuhan variant which is now mostly obsolete. 

Early findings from trials have raised hopes in the Government that either of the two approaches can nullify the threat from existing and new variants, it is understood. Matt Hancock last week announced Number 10 had bought 60million more doses of the Pfizer jab to use for the second rollout.

A senior government minister told The Times: ‘We think that the level of protection in the population to any variant will be so high that, by Christmas, Covid should have just faded away into the background like any other illness in circulation. So much so we don’t think there will be any need to give a booster shot to younger people because transmission will have got so low.’

Public Health England, soon to become the UK Health Security Agency, will also pump an extra £30million into analysing positive swab samples to ‘future-proof’ the UK against variants. The project will be co-ordinated from its Porton Down lab in Wiltshire.

Boris Johnson is under mounting pressure to speed up the easing of England’s lockdown because of the hugely successful vaccination drive and cases and deaths dwindling. Restrictions won’t be loosened until May 17, when foreign holidays are set to be given the go ahead. Pubs will also be allowed to open indoors. Measures will stay in place until June 21, at the earliest.

More than 34.6million Britons have been given at least a first dose of Covid vaccine, with 15.6million adults fully immunised. 

Professor Ferguson told the BBC he felt ‘optimistic’ about the UK’s immediate future, adding: ‘In the worst case scenario, if we have a new variant pop up which does manage to evade the vaccines, say late summer early autumn, there may be a need to roll back on some of these measures at least temporarily until we can boost people’s immunity.

‘Do I think it’s likely to happen? No, I don’t. I think we are much more likely to be on a steady course now out of this pandemic, at least in this country.’

Fears about a devastating third wave of disease this summer, which the Prime Minister had been forced to accept was inevitable, are now calming.

Even SAGE experts think it is ‘very unlikely’ that there will be a devastating spike in cases when lockdown ends.

Thanks to vaccines effectively cutting transmission as well as preventing serious illness, modellers trying to predict future outbreaks suggest the danger has been lessened.

New possible scenarios are set to be published next week by government scientists, The Times reports, that will show a reduced risk from reopening in the summer.

Professor Graham Medley, SAGE adviser and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the paper: ‘The good news about the vaccination effect means that some of the scenarios about very large waves later in the summer are now very unlikely.’    

With science now proving the Covid vaccines work well in the real world, Britain has has ordered an extra 60million doses of the Pfizer jab, taking its total order to 100m in preparation for the booster rollout later in the year.

These doses are the same as the Pfizer ones currently being given out and have not been tweaked to target new variants specifically. But pharmaceutical companies are also developing and trialling variant-specific jabs and either type could be used for the autumn rollout, due to begin in September.

And the Department of Health said it will ‘future-proof’ the country’s defences against new variants by setting up a research hub to quadruple the number of variant tests carried out each week from 700 to 3,000. 

This will speed up the recognition of new strains and help officials to work out which ones are circulating in the UK and where, allowing them to do surge testing and develop new vaccines if necessary.

Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said: ‘While we expect the existing vaccines to offer protection against new variants – particularly preventing serious illness and death – it is important that we continue to monitor the picture as it develops.’

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi said on BBC Breakfast this move would ‘future-proof the vaccination programme for next year and the years beyond that, as we move from pandemic to endemic and deal with it in the way we would deal with the annual flu vaccination programme’.

Speaking to Sky News about the booster vaccines he said the country was stockpiling the extras, adding: ‘Pfizer is one option, we’re going to give [people] an AstraZeneca option – we’re working with the team on a vaccine variant.

‘Clinicians haven’t yet made the decision when they will need to boost, whether to give more immunity to the most vulnerable, to increase the durability of the protection or to deal with the variant.’ 

The news comes after Britain dropped demands for India to release five million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine destined for the UK.

Whitehall sources said efforts to lift the export ban imposed in March by the Indian government had been ‘put on the backburner’.

It comes amid concern about the dire state of the pandemic in the country, where Covid cases have soared past 20million. 

Mr Johnson held wide-ranging talks via video link with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi as part of plans to deliver a ‘quantum leap’ in relations between the two countries in the next decade.

Downing Street said the two leaders talked about the need to boost ‘pandemic resilience’. 

In a statement released afterwards, Mr Johnson highlighted Britain’s assistance with the crisis in India, which includes the provision of oxygen equipment and ventilators. 

He said: ‘In the last week the British people have stepped up in their thousands to support our Indian friends during this terrible time in a demonstration of the deep connection between the UK and India. This connection will only grow over the next decade as we do more together to tackle the world’s biggest problems and make life better for our people.’

In March, the Prime Minister despatched his senior aide Lord Lister to try to secure the release of five million doses of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the Serum Institute of India.

At the time, the institute – the world’s largest vaccine producer – indicated that the export had been blocked by the Indian government.