WATCH: Labour calls on government to publish Covid deaths outside of hospitals

Liz Kendall has called on the government to publish the daily Covid-19 death figures for those outside of hospitals, stating that relying on statistics with a ten-day lag from the Office for National Statistics is not good enough.

In an interview with BBC News today, the junior social care shadow minister said that to deal with the coronavirus, the UK must know “how big it is, where it is and how fast it’s spreading”.

Kendall stated that because of the time lag with the ONS figures, it is unacceptable to rely on them. She said it’s important that the government “collects and publishes the daily death figures outside of hospital, including in care homes”.

She stated: “We’ve seen from the ONS today a huge increase in the number of people who have died from Covid-19 in care homes, but we know if you look at the up to date figures that would likely be much, much bigger.”

The figures released by the ONS today suggest that the number of people to have died from Covid-19 could be significantly higher than previously thought. But the ONS has a ten-day lag in its reporting process.

In the week leading up to April 3rd, for example, the organisation recorded 6,235 coronavirus deaths in England and Wales compared to the 4,093 confirmed by the NHS.

Two of the largest care providers of care homes in the country recently revealed that 521 of their residents have died from the coronavirus pandemic in the past few weeks.

As of yesterday, the number of people in the UK to have died was reported by Public Health England as 11,329 with a total of 88,621 confirmed cases – but given low levels of testing among the population, the true figure is thought to be much higher.