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For the week ending August 29, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were ****below the number expected, compared withÌý***Ìýbelow what was expected in the previous week. In late 2022 and through early 2023, excess deaths were elevated for a number of weeks, with the excess deaths figure for the week ending January 13, 2023, the highest since February 2021. In the middle of April 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were almost * excess deaths a week recorded in England and Wales. It was not until two months later, in the week ending June 19, 2020, that the number of deaths began to be lower than the five-year average for the corresponding week.Ìý

Most deaths since 1918 in 2020

In 2020, there were **deaths in the United Kingdom, making that year the deadliest since 1918, at the height of the Spanish influenza pandemic. As seen in the excess death figures, April 2020 was by far the worst month in terms of deaths during the pandemic. The weekly number of deaths for weeks 16 and 17 of that year were *, and * respectively. Although the number of deaths fell to more usual levels for the rest of that year, a winter wave of the disease led to a high number of deaths in January 2021, with * deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were ** deaths in the UK, * fewer than in 2020.

Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse

In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was **** years, while for men it was **** years. This was the lowest life expectancy in the country for ten years, and came after life expectancy improvements stalled throughout the 2010s, and then declined from 2020 onwards. There is also quite a significant regional difference in life expectancy in the UK. In the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, for example, the life expectancy for men was **** years, and **** years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just **** years, while for women, life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at ***years.