Uncommon causes of death

With deaths from COVID-19 now extremely low we thought it might be interesting to look at some of the less common ways people sadly die each year.

For more than a year now, news coverage has included daily figures on the number of COVD-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths. At the peak of the pandemic waves, these statistics made for grim reading, with more than 1,800 deaths recorded on the worst day in January 2021.

Lockdown measures and, crucially, the successful vaccine rollout have seen the number of daily deaths plummet in the months since the peak of the second wave. Recently, the UK recorded zero daily deaths from COVID for the first time since the pandemic began.

While it is expected that some people will sadly still die from COVID-19 in the future, particularly as lockdown measures are eased, the hope is that the numbers will remain low, thanks to the high proportion of the population now vaccinated.

To keep this low number of COVID deaths in perspective, the chart above shows the number of deaths in the UK in 2019 by some uncommon causes. For instance, 17 people died drowning in a bathtub, 34 people lost their lives through adverse effects from therapeutic drugs, and 13 people died from their clothing catching fire.

Each of these deaths is tragic but demonstrates that there is a wide range of causes of death for which take relatively few lives, many of which do not garner the same media attention as the current low number of COVID deaths.