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.

Number of deaths registered each month by area of usual residence for England and Wales, by region, county, health authorities, local and unitary authority, and London borough.

In August 2025, there were 39,435 deaths in England and Wales, compared with 45,796 in July. In April 2020, there were 88,038 deaths, which was an increase of almost 40,000 from the month before and by far the month with the most deaths in this period. The dramatic increase in deaths in April can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which first hit the UK in early 2020.

In 2023, the age-specific death rate for men aged 90 or over in England and Wales was 248.1 per one thousand population, and 215.1 for women. Except for infants that were under the age of one, younger age groups had the lowest death rate, with the death rate getting progressively higher in older age groups.

Period and cohort mortality rates (qx) for England and Wales using the principal projection by single year of age 0 to 100.

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.

Experimental analysis of ethnic differences in cause-specific mortality rates in England and Wales based on 2011 Census and death registrations.

Men working in working-class jobs were at a higher risk of dying from Coronavirus in England and Wales, when compared their counterparts working in white-collar professions, as of April 2020. The death rate was highest for men working occupations classified as elementary trades at 27.8 per 100,000 population, compared with just 3.9 for those working in scientific research.

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

Discontinued. Contains key statistics of deaths and death rates in England and Wales by age, sex, marital status, place of death, birthplace and coroner involvement for the year. Source agency: Office for National Statistics Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Mortality Statistics: General, England and Wales (Series DH1: discontinued)

Presents data on death registrations in England and Wales by area of usual residence. The release contains a summary table providing key mortality measures (numbers and rates including age standardised mortality rates) and a table providing numbers of deaths by age and sex. Source agency: Office for National Statistics Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Mortality Statistics: Deaths registered in England and Wales by area of usual residence

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, by age, sex, region and Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD), in the latest weeks for which data are available.

Presents mortality statistics on deaths registered in England and Wales by age-group, sex and underlying cause of death and by other selected information collected at the time of registration. Source agency: Office for National Statistics Designation: National Statistics Language: English Alternative title: Mortality Statistics: Deaths registered in England and Wales (Series DR)

Mortality from leading causes of death by ethnic group, England and Wales, 2012 to 2019.

This statistic presents the alcohol-specific death rate in Wales from 2001 to 2023, by gender. In 2023, the alcohol-specific death rate for men in Wales was 23.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, while in the same year the female alcohol-specific death rate was 12.2 per 100,000 population.

In 2020, ***** men and **** women per 100,000 population died from chronic liver disease (including cirrhosis) in England and Wales. During the provided time interval, males in England and Wales have had approximately double the mortality rate from liver disease compared to females.