On January 12, 2021, over 4.5 thousand individuals in the UK were admitted to hospital with coronavirus (COVID-19), the highest single amount since the start of the pandemic. The daily hospital cases started to rise significantly at the end of 2020 and into January 2021, however since then the number of hospitalizations fell dramatically as the UK managed to vaccinate millions against COVID-19. Overall, since the pandemic started around 994 thousand people in the UK have been hospitalized with the virus.

The total number of cases in the UK can be found here. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Dataset description

Daily official UK Covid data. The data is available per country (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) and for different regions in England. The different regions are split into two different files as part of the data is directly gathered by the NHS (National Health Service). The files that contain the word 'nhsregion' in their name, include data related to hospitals only, such as number of admissions or number of people in respirators. The files containing the word 'region' in their name, include the rest of the data, such as number of cases, number of vaccinated people or number of tests performed per day. The next paragraphs describe the columns for the different file types.

Region files

Files related to regions (word 'region' included in the file name) have the following columns: - "date": date in YYYY-MM-DD format - "area type": type of area covered in the file (region or nation) - "area name": name of area covered in the file (region or nation name) - "daily cases": new cases on a given date - "cum cases": cumulative cases - "new deaths 28days": new deaths within 28 days of a positive test - "cum deaths 28days": cumulative deaths within 28 days of a positive test - "new deaths_60days": new deaths within 60 days of a positive test - "cum deaths 60days": cumulative deaths within 60 days of a positive test - "new_first_episode": new first episodes by date - "cum_first_episode": cumulative first episodes by date - "new_reinfections": new reinfections by specimen data - "cum_reinfections": cumualtive reinfections by specimen data - "new_virus_test": new virus tests by date - "cum_virus_test": cumulative virus tests by date - "new_pcr_test": new PCR tests by date - "cum_pcr_test": cumulative PCR tests by date - "new_lfd_test": new LFD tests by date - "cum_lfd_test": cumulative LFD tests by date - "test_roll_pos_pct": percentage of unique case positivity by date rolling sum - "test_roll_people": unique people tested by date rolling sum - "new first dose": new people vaccinated with a first dose - "cum first dose": cumulative people vaccinated with a first dose - "new second dose": new people vaccinated with a first dose - "cum second dose": cumulative people vaccinated with a first dose - "new third dose": new people vaccinated with a booster or third dose - "cum third dose": cumulative people vaccinated with a booster or third dose

Country files

Files related to countries (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) have the above columns and also: - "new admissions": new admissions, - "cum admissions": cumulative admissions, - "hospital cases": patients in hospitals, - "ventilator beds": COVID occupied mechanical ventilator beds - "trans_rate_min": minimum transmission rate (R) - "trans_rate_max": maximum transmission rate (R) - "trans_growth_min": transmission rate growth min - "trans_growth_max": transmission rate growth max

NHS Region files

Files related to nhsregion (word 'nhsregion' included in the file name) have the following columns: - "new admissions": new admissions, - "cum admissions": cumulative admissions, - "hospital cases": patients in hospitals, - "ventilator beds": COVID occupied mechanical ventilator beds - "trans_rate_min": minimum transmission rate (R) - "trans_rate_max": maximum transmission rate (R) - "trans_growth_min": transmission rate growth min - "trans_growth_max": transmission rate growth max

It's worth noting that the dataset hasn't been cleaned and it needs cleaning. Also, different files have different null columns. This isn't an error in the dataset but the way different countries and regions report the data.

In early-February, 2020, the first cases of the coronavirus (COVID-19) were reported in the United Kingdom (UK). The number of cases in the UK has since risen to 24,243,393, with 1,062 new cases reported on January 13, 2023. The highest daily figure since the beginning of the pandemic was on January 6, 2022 at 275,646 cases.

COVID deaths in the UK COVID-19 has so far been responsible for 202,157 deaths in the UK as of January 13, 2023, and the UK has one of the highest death toll from COVID-19 in Europe. As of January 13, the incidence of deaths in the UK is 298 per 100,000 population.

Regional breakdown The South East has the highest amount of cases in the country with 3,123,050 confirmed cases as of January 11. London and the North West have 2,912,859 and 2,580,090 cases respectively.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

As of June 13, 2023, there have been almost 768 million cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) worldwide. The disease has impacted almost every country and territory in the world, with the United States confirming around 16 percent of all global cases.

COVID-19: An unprecedented crisis Health systems around the world were initially overwhelmed by the number of coronavirus cases, and even the richest and most prepared countries struggled. In the most vulnerable countries, millions of people lacked access to critical life-saving supplies, such as test kits, face masks, and respirators. However, several vaccines have been approved for use, and more than 13 billion vaccine doses had already been administered worldwide as of March 2023.

The coronavirus in the United Kingdom Over 202 thousand people have died from COVID-19 in the UK, which is the highest number in Europe. The tireless work of the National Health Service (NHS) has been applauded, but the country’s response to the crisis has drawn criticism. The UK was slow to start widespread testing, and the launch of a COVID-19 contact tracing app was delayed by months. However, the UK’s rapid vaccine rollout has been a success story, and around 53.7 million people had received at least one vaccine dose as of July 13, 2022.

The Coronavirus (COVID-19) Press Briefings Corpus is a work in progress to collect and present in a machine readable text dataset of the daily briefings from around the world by government authorities. During the peak of the pandemic, most countries around the world informed their citizens of the status of the pandemic (usually involving an update on the number of infection cases, number of deaths) and other policy-oriented decisions about dealing with the health crisis, such as advice about what to do to reduce the spread of the epidemic.Usually daily briefings did not occur on a Sunday.At the moment the dataset includes:

UK/England: Daily Press Briefings by UK Government between 12 March 2020 - 01 June 2020 (70 briefings in total)Scotland: Daily Press Briefings by Scottish Government between 3 March 2020 - 01 June 2020 (76 briefings in total)Wales: Daily Press Briefings by Welsh Government between 23 March 2020 - 01 June 2020 (56 briefings in total)Northern Ireland: Daily Press Briefings by N. Ireland Assembly between 23 March 2020 - 01 June 2020 (56 briefings in total)World Health Organisation: Press Briefings occuring usually every 2 days between 22 January 2020 - 01 June 2020 (63 briefings in total)

More countries will be added in due course, and we will be keeping this updated to cover the latest daily briefings available.The corpus is compiled to allow for further automated political discourse analysis (classification).

On March 4, 2020, the first death as a result of coronavirus (COVID-19) was recorded in the United Kingdom (UK). The number of deaths in the UK has increased significantly since then. As of January 13, 2023, the number of confirmed deaths due to coronavirus in the UK amounted to 202,157. On January 21, 2021, 1,370 deaths were recorded, which was the highest total in single day in the UK since the outbreak began.

Number of deaths among highest in Europe
The UK has had the highest number of deaths from coronavirus in western Europe. In terms of rate of coronavirus deaths, the UK has recorded 297.8 deaths per 100,000 population.

Cases in the UK The number of confirmed cases of coronavirus in the UK was 24,243,393 as of January 13, 2023. The South East has the highest number of first-episode confirmed cases of the virus in the UK with 3,123,050 cases, while London and the North West have 2,912,859 and 2,580,090 confirmed cases respectively. As of January 16, the UK has had 50 new cases per 100,000 in the last seven days.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

The dataset contains a weekly situation update on COVID-19, the epidemiological curve and the global geographical distribution (EU/EEA and the UK, worldwide).

Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, ECDC’s Epidemic Intelligence team has collected the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, based on reports from health authorities worldwide. This comprehensive and systematic process was carried out on a daily basis until 14/12/2020. See the discontinued daily dataset: COVID-19 Coronavirus data - daily. ECDC’s decision to discontinue daily data collection is based on the fact that the daily number of cases reported or published by countries is frequently subject to retrospective corrections, delays in reporting and/or clustered reporting of data for several days. Therefore, the daily number of cases may not reflect the true number of cases at EU/EEA level at a given day of reporting. Consequently, day to day variations in the number of cases does not constitute a valid basis for policy decisions.

ECDC continues to monitor the situation. Every week between Monday and Wednesday, a team of epidemiologists screen up to 500 relevant sources to collect the latest figures for publication on Thursday. The data screening is followed by ECDC’s standard epidemic intelligence process for which every single data entry is validated and documented in an ECDC database. An extract of this database, complete with up-to-date figures and data visualisations, is then shared on the ECDC website, ensuring a maximum level of transparency.

ECDC receives regular updates from EU/EEA countries through the Early Warning and Response System (EWRS), The European Surveillance System (TESSy), the World Health Organization (WHO) and email exchanges with other international stakeholders. This information is complemented by screening up to 500 sources every day to collect COVID-19 figures from 196 countries. This includes websites of ministries of health (43% of the total number of sources), websites of public health institutes (9%), websites from other national authorities (ministries of social services and welfare, governments, prime minister cabinets, cabinets of ministries, websites on health statistics and official response teams) (6%), WHO websites and WHO situation reports (2%), and official dashboards and interactive maps from national and international institutions (10%). In addition, ECDC screens social media accounts maintained by national authorities on for example Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Telegram accounts run by ministries of health (28%) and other official sources (e.g. official media outlets) (2%). Several media and social media sources are screened to gather additional information which can be validated with the official sources previously mentioned. Only cases and deaths reported by the national and regional competent authorities from the countries and territories listed are aggregated in our database.

Disclaimer: National updates are published at different times and in different time zones. This, and the time ECDC needs to process these data, might lead to discrepancies between the national numbers and the numbers published by ECDC. Users are advised to use all data with caution and awareness of their limitations. Data are subject to retrospective corrections; corrected datasets are released as soon as processing of updated national data has been completed.

If you reuse or enrich this dataset, please share it with us.

In early-February 2020, the first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom (UK) were confirmed. The number of cases in the UK increased significantly at the end of 2021. On January 13, 2023, the number of confirmed cases in the UK amounted to 24,243,393. COVID deaths among highest in Europe There were 202,157 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the UK as of January 13, 2023. For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Current infection rate in Europe The current infection rate in the UK was 50 cases per 100,000 population in the last seven days as of January 16. San Marino had the highest seven day rate of infections in Europe at 336.

The dataset contains a daily situation update on COVID-19, the epidemiological curve and the global geographical distribution (EU/EEA and the UK, worldwide).

On 12 February 2020, the novel coronavirus was named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) while the disease associated with it is now referred to as COVID-19. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, ECDC’s Epidemic Intelligence team has been collecting on daily basis the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, based on reports from health authorities worldwide. To insure the accuracy and reliability of the data, this process is being constantly refined. This helps to monitor and interpret the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic not only in the European Union (EU), the European Economic Area (EEA), but also worldwide. Every day between 6.00 and 10.00 CET, a team of epidemiologists screens up to 500 relevant sources to collect the latest figures. The data screening is followed by ECDC’s standard epidemic intelligence process for which every single data entry is validated and documented in an ECDC database. An extract of this database, complete with up-to-date figures and data visualisations, is then shared on the ECDC website, ensuring a maximum level of transparency.

ECDC switched to a weekly reporting schedule for the COVID-19 situation worldwide and in the EU/EEA and the UK on 17 December 2020. Hence, all daily updates have been discontinued from 14 December. The weekly data can be found in the dataset COVID-19 Coronavirus data - weekly (from 17 December 2020).

If you reuse or enrich this dataset, please share it with us.

The COVID-19 dashboard includes data on city/town COVID-19 activity, confirmed and probable cases of COVID-19, confirmed and probable deaths related to COVID-19, and the demographic characteristics of cases and deaths.

As of November 24, 2024 there were over 274 million confirmed cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) across the whole of Europe since the first confirmed cases in France in January 2020. France has been the worst affected country in Europe with 39,028,437 confirmed cases, followed by Germany with 38,437,756 cases. Italy and the UK have approximately 26.8 million and 25 million cases respectively. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Countries around the world are in a state of lockdown to help limit the spread of SARS-CoV-2. However, as the number of new daily confirmed cases begins to decrease, governments must decide how to release their populations from quarantine as efficiently as possible without overwhelming their health services. We applied an optimal control framework to an adapted Susceptible-Exposure-Infection-Recovery (SEIR) model framework to investigate the efficacy of two potential lockdown release strategies, focusing on the UK population as a test case. To limit recurrent spread, we find that ending quarantine for the entire population simultaneously is a high-risk strategy, and that a gradual re-integration approach would be more reliable. Furthermore, to increase the number of people that can be first released, lockdown should not be ended until the number of new daily confirmed cases reaches a sufficiently low threshold. We model a gradual release strategy by allowing different fractions of those in lockdown to re-enter the working non-quarantined population. Mathematical optimization methods, combined with our adapted SEIR model, determine how to maximize those working while preventing the health service from being overwhelmed. The optimal strategy is broadly found to be to release approximately half the population 2–4 weeks from the end of an initial infection peak, then wait another 3–4 months to allow for a second peak before releasing everyone else. We also modeled an “on-off” strategy, of releasing everyone, but re-establishing lockdown if infections become too high. We conclude that the worst-case scenario of a gradual release is more manageable than the worst-case scenario of an on-off strategy, and caution against lockdown-release strategies based on a threshold-dependent on-off mechanism. The two quantities most critical in determining the optimal solution are transmission rate and the recovery rate, where the latter is defined as the fraction of infected people in any given day that then become classed as recovered. We suggest that the accurate identification of these values is of particular importance to the ongoing monitoring of the pandemic.

Based on a comparison of coronavirus deaths in 210 countries relative to their population, Peru had the most losses to COVID-19 up until July 13, 2022. As of the same date, the virus had infected over 557.8 million people worldwide, and the number of deaths had totaled more than 6.3 million. Note, however, that COVID-19 test rates can vary per country. Additionally, big differences show up between countries when combining the number of deaths against confirmed COVID-19 cases. The source seemingly does not differentiate between "the Wuhan strain" (2019-nCOV) of COVID-19, "the Kent mutation" (B.1.1.7) that appeared in the UK in late 2020, the 2021 Delta variant (B.1.617.2) from India or the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) from South Africa.

The difficulties of death figures

This table aims to provide a complete picture on the topic, but it very much relies on data that has become more difficult to compare. As the coronavirus pandemic developed across the world, countries already used different methods to count fatalities, and they sometimes changed them during the course of the pandemic. On April 16, for example, the Chinese city of Wuhan added a 50 percent increase in their death figures to account for community deaths. These deaths occurred outside of hospitals and went unaccounted for so far. The state of New York did something similar two days before, revising their figures with 3,700 new deaths as they started to include “assumed” coronavirus victims. The United Kingdom started counting deaths in care homes and private households on April 29, adjusting their number with about 5,000 new deaths (which were corrected lowered again by the same amount on August 18). This makes an already difficult comparison even more difficult. Belgium, for example, counts suspected coronavirus deaths in their figures, whereas other countries have not done that (yet). This means two things. First, it could have a big impact on both current as well as future figures. On April 16 already, UK health experts stated that if their numbers were corrected for community deaths like in Wuhan, the UK number would change from 205 to “above 300”. This is exactly what happened two weeks later. Second, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly which countries already have “revised” numbers (like Belgium, Wuhan or New York) and which ones do not. One work-around could be to look at (freely accessible) timelines that track the reported daily increase of deaths in certain countries. Several of these are available on our platform, such as for Belgium, Italy and Sweden. A sudden large increase might be an indicator that the domestic sources changed their methodology.

Where are these numbers coming from?

The numbers shown here were collected by Johns Hopkins University, a source that manually checks the data with domestic health authorities. For the majority of countries, this is from national authorities. In some cases, like China, the United States, Canada or Australia, city reports or other various state authorities were consulted. In this statistic, these separately reported numbers were put together. For more information or other freely accessible content, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

COVID-19 rate of death, or the known deaths divided by confirmed cases, was over ten percent in Yemen, the only country that has 1,000 or more cases. This according to a calculation that combines coronavirus stats on both deaths and registered cases for 221 different countries. Note that death rates are not the same as the chance of dying from an infection or the number of deaths based on an at-risk population. By April 26, 2022, the virus had infected over 510.2 million people worldwide, and led to a loss of 6.2 million. The source seemingly does not differentiate between "the Wuhan strain" (2019-nCOV) of COVID-19, "the Kent mutation" (B.1.1.7) that appeared in the UK in late 2020, the 2021 Delta variant (B.1.617.2) from India or the Omicron variant (B.1.1.529) from South Africa.

Where are these numbers coming from?

The numbers shown here were collected by Johns Hopkins University, a source that manually checks the data with domestic health authorities. For the majority of countries, this is from national authorities. In some cases, like China, the United States, Canada or Australia, city reports or other various state authorities were consulted. In this statistic, these separately reported numbers were put together. Note that Statista aims to also provide domestic source material for a more complete picture, and not to just look at one particular source. Examples are these statistics on the confirmed coronavirus cases in Russia or the COVID-19 cases in Italy, both of which are from domestic sources. For more information or other freely accessible content, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

A word on the flaws of numbers like this

People are right to ask whether these numbers are at all representative or not for several reasons. First, countries worldwide decide differently on who gets tested for the virus, meaning that comparing case numbers or death rates could to some extent be misleading. Germany, for example, started testing relatively early once the country’s first case was confirmed in Bavaria in January 2020, whereas Italy tests for the coronavirus postmortem. Second, not all people go to see (or can see, due to testing capacity) a doctor when they have mild symptoms. Countries like Norway and the Netherlands, for example, recommend people with non-severe symptoms to just stay at home. This means not all cases are known all the time, which could significantly alter the death rate as it is presented here. Third and finally, numbers like this change very frequently depending on how the pandemic spreads or the national healthcare capacity. It is therefore recommended to look at other (freely accessible) content that dives more into specifics, such as the coronavirus testing capacity in India or the number of hospital beds in the UK. Only with additional pieces of information can you get the full picture, something that this statistic in its current state simply cannot provide.

There were 11,480 deaths registered in England and Wales for the week ending November 14, 2025, compared with 11,297 in the previous week. During this time period, the two weeks with the highest number of weekly deaths were in April 2020, with the week ending April 17, 2020, having 22,351 deaths, and the following week 21,997 deaths, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. Death and life expectancy As of 2022, the life expectancy for women in the UK was just over 82.5 years, and almost 78.6 years for men. Compared with 1765, when average life expectancy was under 39 years, this is a huge improvement in historical terms. Even in the more recent past, life expectancy was less than 47 years at the start of the 20th Century, and was under 70 as recently as the 1950s. Despite these significant developments in the long-term, improvements in life expectancy stalled between 2009/11 and 2015/17, and have even gone into decline since 2020. Between 2020 and 2022, for example, life expectancy at birth fell by 23 weeks for females, and 37 weeks for males. COVID-19 in the UK The first cases of COVID-19 in the United Kingdom were recorded on January 31, 2020, but it was not until a month later that cases began to rise exponentially. By March 5 of this year there were more than 100 cases, rising to 1,000 days later and passing 10,000 cumulative cases by March 26. At the height of the pandemic in late April and early May, there were around six thousand new cases being recorded daily. As of January 2023, there were more than 24.2 million confirmed cumulative cases of COVID-19 recorded in the United Kingdom, resulting in 202,156 deaths.

In 2023 life expectancy for both males and females at birth rose when compared to 2022. Male life expectancy increased from 78.58 years to 78.82 years, and from 82.57 years to 82.77 years for females. Throughout most of this period, there is a steady rise in life expectancy for both males and females, with improvements in life expectancy beginning to slow in the 2010s and then starting to decline in the 2020s. Life expectancy since the 18th Century Although there has been a recent dip in life expectancy in the UK, long-term improvements to life expectancy stretch back several centuries. In 1765, life expectancy was below 39 years, and only surpassed 40 years in the 1810s, 50 years by the 1910s, 60 years by the 1930s and 70 by the 1960s. While life expectancy has broadly improved since the 1700s, this trajectory was interrupted at various points due to wars and diseases. In the early 1920s, for example, life expectancy suffered a noticeable setback in the aftermath of the First World War and Spanish Flu Epidemic. Impact of COVID-19 While improvements to UK life expectancy stalled during the 2010s, it wasn't until the 2020s that it began to decline. The impact of COVID-19 was one of the primary factors in this respect, with 2020 seeing the most deaths in the UK since 1918. The first wave of the pandemic in Spring of that year was a particularly deadly time, with weekly death figures far higher than usual. A second wave that winter saw a peak of almost 5,700 excess deaths a week in late January 2021, with excess deaths remaining elevated for several years afterward.

In the third quarter of 2025, an estimated 2.8 million people were economically inactive due to being on long-term sickness leave in the UK, slightly down from a peak of over 2.84 million people in the fourth quarter of 2023. This figure has been rising considerably since 2019, when there were just over two million people economically inactive for this reason. Since the third quarter of 2021, long-term and temporary sickness has been the main reason that people were economically inactive, accounting for 32.1 percent of economic inactivity in the fourth quarter of 2024. What is driving the increase in long-term sickness? It is unclear if there are any specific reasons for the continued growth of long-term sickness in the UK. As of 2022, some of the most common health conditions cited as the reason for long-term sickness were to do with mental health issues, with 313,00 suffering from mental illness, and a further 282,000 for depression-related illness. It is also likely that the COVID-19 pandemic caused an impact, with around 1.8 million people in April 2022 reporting an experience of Long Covid. In general, while the majority of people on long-term sick leave are over the age of 50, there has been a noticeable increase in those aged under 35 being off on long-term sickness. Between 2019 and 2022, the number of those aged between 16 and 34 on long-term sickness increased by 140,000, compared with just 32,000 for those aged between 35 and 49. UK labor market set to continue cooling in 2025? In 2022, the UK labor market was slightly more weighted in favor of workers and people looking for work than usual. Unemployment fell to historical levels, while job vacancies reached a peak of more than 1.3 million in May. Wage growth also remained strong during this period, although as this occurred at a time of high inflation, wages fell in real terms for a long period between November 2021 and June 2023. Although the job market continued to show signs of resilience, for some time, there are signs this is now changing. In December 2024, the UK unemployment rate was 4.4 percent, a joint post-pandemic high, while in the same month job vacancies fell to their lowest level since May 2021.

For the week ending August 29, 2025, weekly deaths in England and Wales were 985 below the number expected, compared with 855 below 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 12,000 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. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were 689,629 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 22,351, and 21,997 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 18,676 deaths recorded in the fourth week of that year. For the whole of 2021, there were 667,479 deaths in the UK, 22,150 fewer than in 2020. Life expectancy in the UK goes into reverse In 2022, life expectancy at birth for women in the UK was 82.6 years, while for men it was 78.6 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 81.5 years, and 86.5 years for women. By contrast, in Blackpool, in North West England, male life expectancy was just 73.1 years, while for women, life expectancy was lowest in Glasgow, at 78 years.

Between 1953 and 2021, the death rate of the United Kingdom fluctuated between a high of 12.2 deaths per 1,000 people in 1962 and a low of 8.7 in 2011. From 2011 onwards, the death rate creeped up slightly and, in 2020, reached 10.3 deaths per 1,000 people. In 2021, the most recent year provided here, the death rate was ten, a decline from 2020 but still higher than in almost every year in the twenty-first century. The recent spike in the death rate corresponds to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK, with the first cases recorded in early 2020. Most deaths since 1918 in 2020 In 2020, there were around 689,600 deaths in the United Kingdom, the highest in more than a century. Although there were fewer deaths in 2021, at almost 667,500, this was still far higher than in recent years. When looking at the weekly deaths in England and Wales for this time period, two periods stand out for reporting far more deaths than usual. The first period was between weeks 13 and 22 of 2020, which saw two weeks in late April report more than 20,000 deaths. Excess deaths for the week ending April 17, 2020, were 11,854 and 11,539 for the following week. Another wave of deaths occurred in January 2021, when there were more than 18,000 deaths per week between weeks three and five of that year. Improvements to life expectancy slowing Between 2020 and 2022, life expectancy in the United Kingdom was approximately 82.57 years for women and 78.57 years for men. Compared with life expectancy in 1980/82, this marked an increase of around six years for women and almost eight years for men. Despite these long-term developments, improvements to life expectancy have been slowing in recent years and have even declined since 2017/19. As of 2023, the country with the highest life expectancy in the World was Switzerland at 84.2 years, followed by Japan at 84.1 years, and then by Spain at 84 years.

In October 2025, approximately 13 percent of workers in Great Britain worked from home exclusively, with a further 27 percent working from home and travelling to work, while 45 percent only travelled to work. During this time period, the share of people only travelling to work was highest in March 2022, at 60 percent of respondents, with the peak for only working from home occurring in June 2020. In general, hybrid working has become steadily more popular than fully remote working, with the highest share of people hybrid working in November 2023, when 31 percent of people advising they were hybrid working. What type of workers are most likely to work from home? In 2020, over half of people working in the agriculture sector mainly worked from home, which was the highest share among UK industry sectors at that time. While this industry was one of the most accessible for mainly working at home, just six percent of workers in the accommodation and food services sector mainly did this, the lowest of any sector. In the same year, men were slightly more likely to mainly work from home than women, while the most common age group for mainly working from home was those aged 75 and over, at 45.4 percent. Over a long-term period, the share of people primarily home working has grown from 11.1 percent in 1998, to approximately 17.4 percent in 2020. Growth of Flexible working in the UK According to a survey conducted in 2023, working from home either on a regular, or ad hoc basis was the most common type of flexible working arrangement offered by organizations in the UK, at 62 percent of respondents. Other popular flexible working arrangements include the ability to work flexible hours, work part-time, or take career breaks. Since 2013, for example, the number of employees in the UK that can work flextime has increased from 3.2 million, to around 4.2 million by 2024. When asked why flexible work was important to them, most UK workers said that it supported a better work-life balance, with 41 percent expressing that it made their commute to work more manageable.